One thing nobody tells you about being a parent before you have kids is how much of the job can be categorized as “removal” – either things from your kids or your kids from things. The idea that I had to intentionally go into my kid’s nose and remove a booger seemed odd at first, it is just something you take for granted as a grown person who can expel their own snot. I was fully prepared for butt wiping, but booger removal not on my radar. Though while it was a foreign concept at first, after having three kids, I’d go so far as to say its become a downright hobby.
The first time I had to suck a booger out of a tiny baby nostril was a pretty stressful experience. I didn’t understand how to properly operate the booker sucker, and my kid was extremely bothered by the the fact I kept jabbing something up her already plugged up nose. Tears were shed and expletives were frustratingly held inside. You can decide which by whom. I was never very good at Operation as a kid, and that was now coming back to bite me in the ass. Why couldn’t Hot Wheels have practical parenting applications?
Perhaps my wife saw these initial struggles and decided she didn’t want any part of it, or perhaps she just enjoyed watching this poor bastard struggle to extricate crusty snot from an infant’s nostril. Either way, removal of things from kids became my job. And I have to say, I’ve come a long way. Surgical precision with the booger sucker. I’ve never served as a field surgeon, but I have removed a pencil eraser from he nose of a screaming toddler, so, same-same. The bulb style of course. I’ve heard rumors of some silly-ass contraption in which you put a straw up a kid’s nose and literally suck the booger out. What are we cave people?
But boogers and noses are just the entry-level jobs. If the baby has lint between their tiny toes from their footie pajamas, you better believe I’m picking that out of there. Safely putting a Q-Tip in the ear of a squirmy little person to remove globs of wax? Challenge accepted. Splinter? Fetch the tweezers! One time my daughter had a tick start to burrow into her scalp. It was my Super Bowl.
Someday my kids will be all be able to blow their own noses and de-wax their own ears, and I wonder what my removal duties will be then? Have booger, poop, and other general crud removal been prepping me for the ultimate test of teenage boy removal? I’m gonna need bigger tweezers.
I Think Therefore I Dad 