The Grosser Sex?

My dear friend Julie at Midlife Jobhunter has raised three boys. Based on our many long talks about our kids, she seems certain that boys must be the grosser sex. Though moms of boys may beg to differ, one thing I can state unequivocally about raising all girls is that they have within them the capacity to defy the "sugar and spice and everything nice" stereotype with off-the-charts grossness. But I had done a fine job of putting that out of my mind until one Saturday morning last August after my car wreck.

My ten-year-old nanaboy whom I affectionately call Doodle (to his great dismay, now that he's experiencing peripuberty), his brother Kabob (age 7), and their mom, my daughter "Scoots," went with me to Enterprise Rent-a-Car so I could switch out vehicles. While waiting our turn behind other customers at the counter, Scoots pointed out to Doodle that he needed to blow his nose. Immediately, he stuck his finger up there. Why blow when you can troll, I always say. Especially if there's a big fish in the pond. Scoots and I immediately recoiled when Doodle hooked something, hauled it out, and examined it. Little Kabob, lover of all manner of grossities, grinned with a newfound respect.

Mortified, Scoots searched the room for Kleenex and found none. She pointed a stiff arm toward the door. "Outside," she said in the take-no-prisoners mommy voice. "Go . . . do something with it."

I added, "There's a bush out there, go wipe it on the bush."

Scoots looked at me in horror. "Mom!"

I shrugged. I had yet to see anything, so I was handling it just fine. Doodle sauntered outside with one finger poised stiffly in the air, Kabob on his heels to see just how his big brother was going to dispose of this most intriguing catch of the day. After much ado, they returned with only a case of the giggles.

Crisis averted, Doodle located the water cooler, pulled out a paper cone, and filled it. As he took a sip, I heard Scoots and Kabob groan. They shielded their eyes and jerked away with full-on facial contortions. "What?" I said. Scoots and Kabob just pointed, unable to speak. Doodle was still giggling.

Scoots, writhing in her chair: "He shot snot into his cup!"

I took Doodle's cup from him and gazed intensely into the water. "I don't see anything."

"That's cuz he sucked it back up in his nose!" Scoots rasped in disbelief, followed by graphic description that made some woman at the counter wince. Doodle was beside himself with laughter.

This would seem to make my friend's case; however, let's look at history, shall we? When Scoots was in the fourth grade, she and her sisters cornered the nanny in our laundry room with HUGE green loogies on their fingers. With no escape route, Nanny Terri screamed and crumpled into a pile on the floor. After the little "snots" ran off, Terri did manage a recovery; however, she lashed them severely with her tongue. When I came in from work, Nanny Terri informed me in high-pitched Spanglish that she couldn't take it anymore and that my daughters were devil spawn (she actually said something unintelligible, but I have no doubt it translated to devil spawn).

My daughters, all lined up firing-squad style, explained to Nanny Terri that their loogies were not really loogies at all, but scoops of their moldy science experiment, fished from under the bed where it had languished for weeks. Nanny Terri refused to believe she'd nearly expired over fermented mold. Instead she delivered her walking papers and headed out the door, never to be heard from again.

I chuckled to myself as Scoots dragged Doodle into the bathroom to blow his nose once and for all. And I thought, You aren't fooling anybody, Miss Suddenly Grossed Out By Loogies. I know exactly where you came from.

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