Q: How do you make a tissue dance?
A: You put a little boogie in it.

We have a third member of the family. His name is Carl, and he lives in my son’s nose. Carl is a booger that’s taken residence in Boychild’s right nostril. Did I tell you I love naming things? He’s been around for about three days and we cannot get him out, despite many attempts to blow him out. My attempts to pick Carl out have been met with scream-crying and head-shaking. I also retch when I try to evict Carl, as I do not like boogers. They are gross. I get to heavin’ whenever I have to touch one. I’m not at the retching stage yet, but my stomach definitely twists when I encounter any form of mucus on another human. If you ever want to make me leave, hawk a loogie. Seriously, I’ll be gone. I’ll never bother you again, ma’am/ sir. I won’t run, because I don’t run, but I will mightily scoot away if confronted with any form of snot. I’m frowning so hard writing this right now that I can barely see the screen. I might need botox after this post.

In retrospect, one of the gifts of wearing masks is that they hid other people’s grody nose-goblins. That was nice, wasn’t it? Now people are runnin’ around all maskless, lettin’ their boogers hang out, proud and free. If you are booger-prone, I beg you to reevaluate your naked face. Sometimes masks are better.

Carl came on the scene right around Swim Lesson 4. Husband and I decided Boychild should learn how to swim, and Boychild agreed. Because I am encased in a walking boot, the first three swim lessons were attended by Husband, who has two working feet and could assist Boychild in the water. However, dad wasn’t availble during the last few lessons, so I had to go to swim lessons in my walking boot. I have two walking boots: the bedazzled dry boot (Boychild and I put jewels on it), and the soggy gross boot.

Have you ever been submerged in a lake while wearing a walking boot? No? It’s pretty wretched. It’s like your entire foot is encased in a filthy, soaked bedroom shoe made of lead. You can’t swim in it, because kicking underwater in a wet walking boot is nigh impossible, so you just sort of suspend you foot in the water. There’s also the matter of what it takes to get to and from swimming lessons. Get in the car with dry boot, holding wet boot. Take off dry boot and put on driving shoe. Get to beach. Take off driving shoe. Change bandage to wet bandage, put on wet boot. Hobble to beach. After the lesson, reverse the whole process. I’ll never take simply driving in a shoe for granted ever again (yes I will). But being a mom, I know that all of this footwear mess will be worth it so that my little boy can take swimming lessons. Except . . . he doesn’t care about swimming lessons.

My child is a social child. He’s been starved of social contact with strange people for the better part of a year, so when he sees a stranger, he wants to tell them all about himself. “Hey! I have unicorn yogret!” he’ll yell to a pre-teen girl. “Hey! Did you know I have carpernter ants at my house?” he’ll say to an old man. No one is off limits. No topic is off limits. To Boychild, the whole world is an audience and a new friend. I love it, but he does not care about swim lessons. He would rather chat with the 50 year-old super-tan lady smoking a cigarette. Boychild actively refuses to do what the poor teacher tells him to do. She’s very gently with him, but he says “No, no no!” and gleefully moves on to find his next new friend. “Hey- my mom has a broken foot!” “Did you know I have two cats?” “I just ate a hotdog!”

After twenty minutes of Boychild ignoring the teacher and yelling our life story to strangers, I gave up trying to get him to learn anything, and we stayed after class to goof off in the water. I put him in a life vest and twirled him in the water. Then I picked him up tossed him in the water. That was a mistake. He went under, even with the life vest on, even in two feet of water. F%CK! He popped up like a cork, sputtering and scared. I felt so bad! Poor fella. I nearly drowned my child. He had water up his nose and in his mouth. Anyhow, that’s how we got Carl. Since the water-tossing event, Carl has been a part of our lives, the universe getting its revenge on me for being casual about water safety.

I thought that at this age, kids picked their noses, but ours doesn’t. I’m glad. I don’t want to find boogers everywhere. In this case, though, it’d be really helpful if he was a nose-picker, because Carl needs to go. We just watched an episode of the terrific show “Alone” and one of the contestants gets a fly stuck in his ear. It was horrific, but I identified with his plight. At one point, he took a flashlight held it to his ear, hoping the fly would see the light and come towards the light. Watching this, I thought, “Maybe that’s how we’ll get Carl: lure him out with a flashlight.” I mean, anything’s on the table at this point.