Horrible Parents - The Booger Hookah

crosspost from The Soy Bean

written by Casey

I’m of two minds at the moment.  When I first conceived this post a week or so ago it was intended to be light-hearted.  Now that I have finally taken, uploaded, and viewed the pictures, I feel slightly horrible about what my wife (I’m just the photographer) has been putting our son through.

Ray has had a perpetual hacking cough/endlessly snot-oozing nose since about a week after he started going to daycare.  He doesn’t seem put out in the least about coughing hysterically and spontaneously ejecting copious amounts of snot from both nostrils.  I suppose anticipating this turn of events months ago, my wife was moved to make a preemptive purchase.

Despite decades of simple yet effective use provided by the squeezable booger bulb that everyone, whether you have a child or not, can easily identify, someone in Japan thought they could improve upon the idea by making a booger removal system more complicated, more difficult to use, and most of all far more traumatic for the child. At least it’s cute.  I give you the booger hookah:

Step 1: Pin down child’s arms with adult legs. Step 2: Place blunt-ended tube in mommy’s mouth. Step 3: Insert pointy end in baby’s nostril. Step 4: Suck, using opposite nostril as a snot carb.

Result: Horribly upset child, crushing your tiny little head.

The irony is that Ray plays with this terrible little object whenever he can. He loves chewing on the booger chamber, or swinging the whole unit around by the hookah tubes. But when the time comes to harvest the snot, bad times. Rarely have I heard the boy howl like he does when he’s pinned down and mid-snot removal. He generally comes around pretty quickly though; rapid administration of breast to mouth speeds improves recovery time.

I think we might adopt a less intrusive method of coaxing mucous out of Ray though.  Perhaps a feather to the nostril might do the trick.