My boy wiped snot on his jacket and smirked as if to say, “Your loss.”
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My children have recently figured out that snot makes for a funny topic and a fascinating substance. I’m surprised by how often they eat their own snot. I was not this kind of child—I’ll admit I have tasted snot in my adulthood out of something like childhood curiosity, but I have never actually swallowed it. In this way, my kids are completely different from me. They get in there and yum.
The other week, my son—he is two—started picking his nose on our public transit train. When he scored a winner, he tried to give the snot to a fellow passenger. The woman smiled at me, giggling a bit, but she told my son, “No, thank you.” My boy then wiped the snot on his jacket and smirked as if to say, “Your loss.”
My daughter—she’s five—thinks snot is really delicious. She refuses to share it. When I sit with her watching a film or listening to music, she’ll freely and openly dig in for some slime and eat it. When I tell her that snot plants trees in people’s stomachs, and that these trees grow out of the throat and ears, extending branches through the eyeballs, she’ll say, “I asked mom and she said this is just fantasy.”
Is it?
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Originally appeared at Liquid Ink. Reprinted with permission.
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Unedited Photo: Flickr/Rachel Hoefling