Readers, let me just be honest here. I love picking my nose. I am an avid nose picker. I think, at heart, many of us share this love. Whether you do it in private, in your car, or brazenly at the dinner table, we can all share the glory, fulfillment, suspense, sometimes failure, and usually satisfaction of such classics as
- The Snap: when the initial booger is attached by a thin line of strong snot to some more booger material, which then snaps out to join it. Or, for the less fortunate or less skilled picker, the Failed Snap, in which the snot breaks, leaving the top booger stranded.
- The Diamond: Often to be found high in the nasal cavity in the early morning, the Diamond is a super-hard boulder which would be a sitting duck if it weren't way up where you have to use just the very tip of your pinky, entering at an odd angle. When performed correctly, the entire boulder can be shaken lose and allowed to drop out. More often, one's finger crushes the boulder, destroying all the satisfaction of such a massive haul by breaking it up into more run-of-the-mill material.
- The Clean Sweep: This is the one that keeps you going back time and time again, though it only happens about once a month if you're lucky. It starts with what feels like a normal booger, but then as you pull it out, it is attached to a vast network of snot and boogers that covers the entire interior of the nostril in question, which all breaks free and pulls out like a molted layer of skin. This is the strike, the home run, the touchdown of nosepicking.
- The Thumbtack: These small boogers are so hard and pointed that when you try to pry them lose it is difficult not to push them painfully into the side of the nose. Best to just leave these ones be, as recent research suggests a Thumbtack may evolve into a Diamond if given enough time and space.
- The Interior Zit Dweller: These ones are dicey. They are just run-of-the-mill boogers, but they are located on or around one of those nascent interior nose zits that usually never really come to fruition but cause so much pain and eye-watering to the avid nosepicker. They are best approached with caution and with repeated, honest assessments as to whether the find will be worth the pain.
- The Wait-That's-Actually-Skin: Usually found at the inner bottom of the nasal cavity, these seem like boogers but you soon realize they are little flaps of actual skin. Some nosepickers will then back off, others treat them more like a hangnail.
- The Disapparator: This is a booger you feel on first probe, but then as soon as you go in to get it out, you can no longer find it. Sometimes an explanation comes-- you find a Diamond on your shirt a few hours later, or it turns up when you next blow your nose. But sometimes it is just plain gone, and nobody knows what happens to those ones. Some say they are there, in your heaven nose, when you go to heaven.
- The Fool's Booger: Sometimes your inner nasal walls will have little ridges or bumps that interact just so with your fingertips to produce the sensation of a booger being there when really there is no booger. Many a nosepicker has squandered seconds, or even minutes, searching for the Fool's Booger.
- The Booger-Snot: As its name suggests, this is a hybrid between solid booger and gel-like snot. It is best disposed of by an authoritative "farmer's blow" in a suitable direction (downwind, clear landing zone). In some unfortunate cases, Booger-Snots have been known to be accidentally snorted inwards and disposed of orally like their cousin the Loogy. This is another zone of inquiry entirely, and frankly not my area of expertise.
- The Super-Glue: This one comes out of your nose just fine, but somehow the oils on your fingers seem to activate a clinging mechanism, whether it be strictly adhesive, magnetic, or caused by some subtle manipulation of quantum gravitation. The effect is that you cannot get it off your finger, or if you do it is just onto another finger. It resists both flicking and wiping and often must be pinched off with a neutral substance like paper or tissue.
