Italian Nose Excavations

Everyone has their phobias, from the understandable to the nonsensical and I am not immune to my own phobic curses. Apart from being deathly afraid of cockroaches, I am completely phobic of boogers. Yes, boogers, nose crusts, nasal crunchies, call them what you will. I can stand the sight of blood, excrement, vomit and phlegm (in moderate servings, thank you) but boogers make me want to hurl instantaneously. My fear of such nastiness is perhaps what made the Universe play a practical joke on me one day in Milan as I was on my way to a Nivea commercial casting.

Jackie and I were riding a tram to the casting together. We were on the left hand side of the tram where the seats are singles so she was sitting in front of me. We were probably planning when the next time were gonna make our famous punch was gonna be or how we could get the boys we had crushes on to like us...you know the normal kind of stuff girls talk about, when to my complete horror I saw a man a few seats ahead and across from us digging frantically into his nasal cavities. Now this wasn't your average light nose pick...the kind you see people perform when they are in their cars and don't think anyone is looking. This man was digging deeply and rather enthusiastically in one nostril and then the other, alternating with complete synchronicity.

I was so appalled that I couldn't help but stare as my stomach turned and I probably turned a light shade of green. After a few seconds I tore my eyes away from the nose excavator and turned to Jackie with a look of complete shock, then turned my gaze back at the guy. She followed my eyes and then turned to me with her mouth wide open. We were speechless and nauseated. Almost instantly the man, who must have noticed our stares, shot up from his seat and walked over to us. He started smiling maniacally while still picking his nose and then stood right above me. He had a booger in his fingers that he was rolling into a ball and probably would have flicked onto me had I not screamed and jumped out of my seat with Jackie right behind me. We ran to the front of the tram with the booger man right behind us in hot pursuit. It is by the grace of God that the next tram stop was so close by, because we were able to jump off before that foul dude could get to us.

I have no idea if the guy was clinically insane or just mean and disgusting, and I really don't care either way. All I know is that I was seriously traumatized that afternoon and it took me a few days to ride the trams without looking around at everyone with a serious case of paranoia.