Breathing Easier (One More BTP)

My Pre-Flight Jet

When I was three years old, I made my best attempt to demonstrate the need for consumer protection laws for children’s toys.  I was the happy owner of a little plastic jet airplane that was my regular companion as I zoomed about the house and yard.  It’s aerodynamic shape included a rather sharp nose.  [See picture to the right thanks to Moonbase Central.] 

All 3-year-olds have a strong fascination with their noses.  This is combined with the amazing dexterity of their fingers which are used to rummage around in remote nasal regions.  What becomes of those discoveries is not a subject for polite conversation.  I was a perfectly normal 3-year-old in this regard, which produced a miserable result when I made use of my airplane to perform a task God made fingers for.

Fingers are nimble and strong, while small plastic airplanes are rigid and fragile.  As the plane obediently went about its task as nasal probe, the long nose piece cracked and broke off, lodged in one of my nasal passages.  A nose in a nose if you will.  Though the object was smaller than the cap of a ball-point pen, it felt as if the United States Air Force had parked the front end of one of their jets right in my head.  Desperately I groped for the end of it and only succeeded in shoving it a bit further into the dark.  There I sat.  This moment is etched strongly in my mind: sitting helplessly with a large and seemingly growing foreign object uncomfortably wedged deep in my skull.

Colds can make your sinuses feel full, but there is hope for that to subside.  We have already  mentioned the relationship between fingers and noses -- regular, but temporary.  As I came to grips with the seriousness of my condition, a lifetime with only a single open nasal passage loomed before me and I did what any panicky toddler would do: I bawled.  According to Mom, this bordered on hysteria.  Perhaps it is for the best that I have no recollection of what transpired next.  The whole family ended up making a trip with me to see a doctor who performed the extraction.  There was no visible damage and I returned to my generally care-free 3-year-old existence, without my jet, which made its final flight to the waste bin.  

Some of my siblings have hinted that this little adventure is responsible for my developing the most impressive version of our trademark family nose, a genetic response to overstimulation.  This is a dubious hypotheses but one that still gets a lot of mileage.  To this day, my nose remains a sensitive appendage and I take special care to keep it away from the front end of jet airplanes.