The Booger Incident

Howdy and welcome back! Today, I wanted to share a critical story from my childhood that is both funny and horrifying LOL. In our family, we call it The Booger Incident. Yup, you read that right: The Booger Incident.

A DIY Family Upbringing

But first, some scene-setting. I come from a family of DIYers. My parents fixed up a 100-year-old farmhouse, almost exclusively on their own and with four of us rugrats running around underfoot. They’re really resilient and self-sufficient people and they took a lot of pride in their work. A lot of these lessons have been passed down to me. Now, I’m a DIYer myself who enjoys creating things through my craft hobbies, and also doing my own home renovations and maintenance on my own home.

Setting the Scene

We lived in that farmhouse until I was about six years old so, since I can actually recall this incident, I know that it occurred probably between the ages of four and six. My parents had just finished painting all of the walls. All of them. Yes, you read that again. With four children underfoot, these two people painted their entire home on their own. Can we just stop for a minute and admire how miraculous this is. It had to be divine intervention that they were able to get this done and get the house looking so good.

A Little Kid With a Big Problem

Then along comes me. A little kid dealing with allergies or maybe sick, I don’t know. Maybe I was just being the typical kid who always seems to have a nose full of boogers. I didn’t like the feeling. Like every kid, I often had my finger shoved up my nose. I know, it’s disgusting. I also distinctly remember always sitting in the shopping cart at the grocery store and licking the bars and my mom yelling at me so I would always try to sneak a lick. I remember that. I remember how funny and weird the bars tasted. I don’t even want to think at this age what was on those bars that made them taste that way, but I was just so enamored and I always wanted to lick the shopping carts when we went shopping. That was a total tangent, but hopefully you see what a disgusting little cretin I was.

The Booger Meets the Wall

Anyway, so I’m walking through the house one day. I don’t know what I was doing, but have my finger in my nose and I pulled out a big old booger while standing in the middle of the living room. I didn’t quite know where to put it. I didn’t have any tissues handy and I knew I didn’t want the nasty thing on my clothes. But I also didn’t want to hold onto it anymore because now that it was on my finger, it was really gross and I wanted to be rid of it as soon as possible. I was not really thinking it through or appreciating at that age the hard work my parents just put into painting the whole house. I wiped that booger on one of those freshly painted walls.

The Confrontation

Now the details grow fuzzy, because again it was a very long time ago, and I was very young. I don’t remember the amount of time between putting that booger on the wall and being summoned with my siblings by my father. My memory picks up with a stark feeling of fear. I knew I’d wipe that booger on the wall and I didn’t want to get in any trouble. I remember trying to hide (it’s comical to look back on now because I was trying to hide behind a wooden rocking chair, which you could see me clearly even as small as I was, what an idiot). Also, what a little coward. Even at a young age, I was already a major scaredy-cat and afraid to face up to things.

In this case, I was afraid of being spanked by my father, and also of disappointing him and my mom. Our youngest sister was still just a baby, so it was really just me and my two older siblings. We were called into the living room and lined up in front of the booger. Being three and six years younger than my two older siblings, I was much shorter than them and the booger was, you guessed it, at about a 4 to 6-year-old height, not a nine-year-old and not a 12-year-old height.

The Lineup

Everyone knew who put the booger on the wall, but my dad gave the guilty party a chance to come clean. He lined us up and said he was going to go down the line and ask each of us if we had wiped the booger on the wall. And now, this is not popular nowadays, but we were spanked when we were bad as kids. So, dad said every time we didn’t confess, we will get our butt spanked, and he would go down the line again.

Now, the versions of the story differ based on which sibling you talk to. One says that he went up and down the line 7 times, the other says 3. Again, I must have blocked that piece because I don’t remember exactly how many times I looked at my father and told him it was not me, and we each received a spanking because we all denied it. I know he went down the line more than once, that is for sure. Finally, sobbing and shaking, I exclaimed “It was me!”. The punishment was over.

The Lesson in the Living Room

My siblings were dismissed back upstairs to their rooms. My mom got a warm, wet washcloth and helped me scrub it off the wall, and my dad told me to never lie and never do that again. He also told me that if I had just confessed, no one would’ve had to be spanked. All I would’ve had to do was clean the wall.

It’s a good story in our family lore especially because I’m often seen as a little perfectionist and dad’s little princess, so everyone loves to retell the story when I majorly screwed up as a kid. And I enjoy the laughs too. It’s also just fun to say the word ‘booger’. Try it. Say it out loud and try not to smile when you say it, I dare you. See?

From Scaredy-Cat to Growth

Anyway, I also like the story because it shows me how far I’ve come. For many many years, I have been such a scaredy-cat. I’m very introverted, very afraid to talk to people, absolutely terrified of public speaking, afraid of pain, afraid of death. I’ve missed out on so many exciting moments that I could’ve had in relationships, in my work, and just general life experiences because of my fear.

As you can see, I was a scaredy-cat from an early age. Hiding from my father, knowing I had done wrong and refusing to own up to it. I’m happy to say I’ve changed, and that I take great responsibility for my actions and my words now, but I think there’s always room for improvement in this area.

Lifelong Lessons

What it really taught me was honor for my parents, respect for their authority, and also respect for myself and honoring my own integrity. It also taught me to care for the possessions we own. It was a big lesson that took me many years to understand and I’m grateful for my parents’ wisdom in that moment. I’m sure they didn’t want to spend a bunch of time spanking their children and watching us cry while they waited for one young idiot to confess, but I think there was a major lesson learned there that I know altered me for the rest of my life.

And what about my siblings? Well, the baby was doing whatever babies do, and my older siblings were waiting for me in my room upstairs to beat the absolute stuffing out of me after that lol. We’re still close (don’t worry I survived), but it’s a story and a lesson I’ll never forget not only because of its impact but because my family will NEVER. LET. ME. FORGET. And that’s my version of the booger incident.

What happened when you were a kid that stands out as a strong lesson and memory?