Which is more
private, picking one’s nose for booger or poking one’s ear/s for earwax?
I often find
myself not touching my nose in public even when the desire arises. Picking nose is a private thing, isn’t
it? However, I can be caught poking my
ear/s once in a while especially when in transit.
Either of my ears would
suddenly feel very ticklish sometimes then earwax would fall out of it: a clear
sign that I need to clean my ear/s. This
is a rare occurrence, and I am usually at home when such rarity strikes.
I make it a point
to pick my nose in privacy once a day. I
rarely tinker with my ears. Ear cleaning
should not be done daily so as not to disturb the natural flora and fauna. I do clean my ears at least once a month.
On a related note,
I had a 10-year-old patient who visited the clinic with his mother and older
brother because of nose bleeding.
The boy likes to
pick his nose. He says it’s “masarap (delicious),” referring to the
act of nose picking. He does not eat his
booger, although Kristoff of the animated Disney film Frozen may disagree (Kristoff claims that all men eat their
boogers).
Because the boy
was in school uniform, I asked what he would like to be in the future. His mother interrupted, “He likes to play
Barbie.”
“Play what?”
“Barbie. Barbie dolls.”
“How different is
playing with Barbie dolls from playing with G.I. Joe action figures? They’re all toys that look like little
people.”
The boy just
smiled. He’s a very butch 10-year-old
gay child with no hint of effeminacy in his voice or movement. Many gay children here in the Philippines are
stereotypically effeminate. I have been
an LGBT advocate for ages, and I rarely see butch gay children.
I then asked the
butch boy, “Would you like to be a singer or a sirena (mermaid)?”
The boy laughed
his very butch laugh.
I asked another
question, “Would you like to be a dancer or a Darna?” Darna is the Philippines’ foremost superhero
and is usually used as a term to refer to a gay man, i.e., He is Darna = He is
a gay man.
I enumerated a
number of other female superheroes, and the boy capped the list with
“Supergirl.” H’m. I wondered if he had imagined being a
Kryptonian or being in the arms of a gorgeous Kryptonian like Superman. I never expressed these thoughts to the child
or his mother. Supergirl is quite
popular these days because of her TV series starring Melissa Benoist as the
title character.
The boy’s mother
interrupted again and related how her child admitted being gay to his grandparents
when asked point-blank about his orientation.
His brother never
once showed any sign of animosity or homophobia.
The boy and I
discussed playing with booger, e.g., stretching it into a string, rolling it
into a ball, etc. He did confirm that he
does not eat his own booger.
A booger-loving
butch gay boy in a homophilic and loving family. Queer.
And, that’s great!
