Other people’s boogers

I hate boogs too! I cant stand them when they "string out of noses or creat bubble on tots I want to vomit! I also dont like saliva... don't know why but I hate it.

Boogies don't really bother me. I'm pulmonary nurse, so I suction secretions and have even had mucus fly out of an uncapped tracheostomy (more times than I can count.) Bodily secretions don't bother me...... So what sends a chill down my spine? Loose teeth. I don't know why, but I can stand when my little guys let a loose tooth hang over their lip or when they wiggle it in front of me!

My daughter's boogers don't freak me out, but other people's? Yes.

My mom once heard a joke about boogers.  Decades ago.... DECADES AGO.  She can not hear the word snot without dry heaving.  As kids we always wondered what in the world the joke was, but she didn't think we could handle it.  So I grew up not being allowed to say the word snot.  So I think she's got you beat!

a hose. yep bust out the hose! any kind of mucus bugs me. spit, snot, eeeew! gag me with a spoon! ICK!

Ha! I get a lot of satisfaction when I can clear my nose. I also love it when I get to use the nose sucker on my daughter. I know, totally gross but I enjoy knowing I am clearing her nasal passages so she can breathe. I can't however, stand it when children pick their nose then proceed to enjoy the contents of their nose

you'd prolly die in my line of work. i work in a special needs school and those kids, oh my, they LOVE (to play, eat, lick, etc.) their boogers and i constantly have to clean it off them.

This is hilarious!  I couldn't agree with you more about how disgusting this is, and part of me thinks that if he (or she) flicked something like that at your car you should be able to return fire.  

I have one child who can have his whole day of eating ruined by talking about buggies, though ... there's a LOT of things I don't want in my stalking.

Simply GROSS!

I have a friend whose baby had a blocked nose. So he sucked the boogers out. Yes. He. Did. Can't look him in the eye without dry-heaving. 

Great post, again, Dan!

My latest post: http://theycallmemummy.com/2012/08/10/a-monster-tale/

This is completely the best conversation ever!

And I am supposed to be an adult. Guess at 66 I still haven't made it (Thank God).

http://www.meet-the-boogers.com/images/BOOGERS_SEAL_2_small_1in_150_dpi.jpg

This blog is boogtastic.

Dan, this comment might very well put you over the edge..... Prepare yourself.  

Once, as a new parent, I was sitting around with a group talking about the new and interesting things I found myself able to do when it came to the messy side of parenting.  The nasal bulb thingy used on infants to clean their nose out came up (affectionately called Suzy Snot Sucker in our house) and one of the moms said one time their husband.. wait for it... couldn't find their Suzy so he.... wait for it.....used his mouth in a sort of "Hoover" move on the kids nose to remove the boogers.  I've done some gross things as a mom but there is no way I would ever consider that move an approach worth considering.

 A couple of years ago my daughter came to visit and brought her new babe. I got to hold him in church. I was in heaven right up until the little critter pulled my dress out and sneezed down my cleavage. Unbelievable! 

That said, I've been sneezed on, pooped on, peed on, barfed on, bled on, and nothing fazes me anymore.  I've even handled stranger's bleeding problems and I'm not a health care professional (I was a first responder). It's just a body with all of it's amazing, intricate, messy bits. When I think about how each tiny atom and molecule works together to form cells and then muscles and organs which all work in tandem to make up a living, breathing, at least semi-functional body, I can't complain much.

But don't be handing me a bag of poop or I'll have to be lobbing it back and that would be messy.

I don't think anything really grosses me out anymore. I've been taking care of kids (others' kids and my own) for 25 years now. I've caught puke in my bare hand hundreds of times (when it's catching it or having it hit the carpet/bed/whatever, I'd rather catch it!). I've been peed on, pooped on, sneezed on, bled on. 

The only time any of it was an issue was when I was pregnant with my fifth child and had 23 weeks of morning sickness. Just about anything even slightly gross could induce vomiting without trying. 

I can handle boogers, I can handle blood, I've been up to my elbows, literally, in various forms of excrement (human and animal - at different jobs), but the one thing I absolutely can't stomach, and there's no pun intended here, is... vomit.

I got nauseous reading this post, not because it's about boogers, but because you said just writing about boogers made you "officially sick to my stomach".

Just... eeewwwww!

Gross. I'm always amazed at how many people I see just going to town on their nostrils while driving. WE CAN SEE YOU!

I used to volunteer for a lot of the kids school trips. One thing that always made me gag was when a kid had a long green or yellow booger dripping out of their nose and they would flick their tongue up to taste it!!

All of those things have made me gag at one point or another, depending on my state of mind at the time. What ALWAYS makes me gag though, is drool or spit. That and my 16 yr old cat gacking on the carpet. AUGHHHHH!!!

That's disgusting! That person definitely deserves a fine. Here's why feces disgust me more than boogers: the smell, the increased amount of bacteria. I'd much rather get a bag of snot- it's just less likely to offend all of my senses. A bag of poo would be like holding a small outhouse. While a bag of boogers would be pretty damn bad, it just wouldn't smell as much & I'd know it would have hundreds of different types fewer of potentially pathogenic bacteria. They're are some pretty bad bugs in people's noses, but the variety in the human digestive tract is so much more.

Most human stuff doesn't bother me that much.  My ick is hearing my cat barf - especially in the middle of the night.  Now I know I have a wet slimy mess to clean up but I don't know exactly where.  The worst is stepping in cat barf with your bare feet.

A yucky snot story - my ex hubby had bad allergies. We were at a bar with his family and family friends.  He sneezed hard and a stream of snot hung from his nose - about 2 feet long.  He looked at me like I was suppose to DO SOMETHING, I just turned away.  I mean he was a grown up, let him handle his own snot.  (If it had been one of my kids I am sure I would have rushed to help.)  It seemed that no one had a napkin - AT A BAR?  Finally he just covered his nose and ran to the men's room - with a hand full of snot.  YUCK.

For me it would have to be poop. When my now 12 year old daughter was potty training she would pee on the toilet but she had a phobia about pooping on the toilet. She would bring me a diaper when she had to poop then she go hide and take care of her business and then want me to clean her up. We went through her little ritual. I began to clean her up and when I opened the diaper I started gagging fighting for everything I was worth to keep from vomiting on my little girl,she was freaking out trying to move away from me Im trying to hold her still so poop doesnt get everywhere. The good thing is that was the last time she ever pooped in a diaper.

Perhaps because my kids had frequent colds and I had to get used to sucking out the snot from their little noses with one of those bulb syringes, boogers are not at the top of my list of most grossest things from the human body. Yeah, gross, but not the grossest. Also, I was pooped and peed on as a mom of kids with apparent gastro issues, as well. It was a daily routine to clean exploding breast milk kaka from babies, baby clothes and myslef. Ick.

By far, the most gag inducing substance for me is spit. If I even think of it, let alone see it, and my stomach isn't empty, the chances are I will be running to the nearest toilet. I have a strong memory of a boy on the school bus when I was about 8 y/o that looked me in the eye, spit in his hand, then sucked it up again. I honestly believe that traumitized me for life. That memory alone can make me gag.

As a result ever since I cannot stand the sight of seeing anyone spit, or even thinking of it. And, I could never handle wet and sloppy kissers and have known a couple. Sorry, but a kiss should not entail drooling at all into a persons mouth - nor should a kiss induce a gag reflex. That just seems wrong and an absolute relationship killer.

Splat is such a fantastic word.

Mucus...must be the viscosity...

Boogers used to gross me out too...UNTIL...My daughter inherited her father's humongous sinus cavities and she has allergies to pollen, mold and dogs of all things. How can you avoid all of that, one asks? You can't. Heaven forbid it's October, and dry just after a rainy spell where the leaves are moldy and the goldenrod pollen is flying at the same time and then out of the blue she comes across a dog. She sneezes without stopping and boogers go flying everywhere. We've even had what we playfully call the booger bomb where she sneezes and the boogers trail from her nose all the way down to the ground. The funny thing is that she is totally creeped out by her own boogers and will stand really still just staring at them wide eyed like she's just done something horrific that she can do nothing about. Everyone nearby goes into a panic trying to find the nearest disposable paper product to help her out....but most of the time, I'm the one standing at arms length handing her a paper towel trying to control my own dry heaves.

Eh, boogers have never really bugged me, it's always been the liquid that comes from rotting animals that has sent me running and holding my stomach. Not only does it look bad, but it's smell doesn't leave for a long time.

I think the nose picking thing is nasty in public.  Go to a restroom, get a tissue and clean your nose in private people!  Having said that, the comments here are totally cracking me up!  After the first six months of motherhood, you have been baptized in every bodily fluid known to mankind (womankind?) except for the stuff that stays in the organs (hopefully).  LOL!  When it comes to small children you just have to go with the flow, shut off the gross reflex and deal with it.  My personal nemesis during my kids' babyhood/childhood was vomit.  Ewwwww!  The smell, sound, texture, was almost too much for any rational person to deal with. 

With the grown kids (my youngest is now 19) I can tell them to go take care of that sort of thing where I don't have to see it....

 Dan, if you think about boogers in an analytic way, it might help you reduce your reactivity to them. In general, the human body uses fluids to complete most of its processes... from digestion, excretion, fighting disease, moving oxygen around the body, keeping the brain floating comfortably in the cerebrospinal fluid, etc. There's tonnes of uses, and that's why it's important to keep hydrated. On the external parts of the body exposed to air, fluids are used to clean pores, regulate body temperature, hydrate sensitive tissues that would otherwise dry out and not work properly... and these ones include your eyes and other orifices such as.. your nose! Boogers are really just the half-dried out fluid that comes from cleaning and hydrating your nose. Really, they're mostly dust and water with a few germs in the mix from the person. Don't forget that your nose is connected to your airways, and mouth. Is spit all that much different from boogers? It's from nearly the same place. Maybe boogers have just sat around a little longer and have dried out a bit, whereas saliva is constantly being refreshed. Is this still too gross? Really, I think it's a lot less gross than similar cleaning fluid processes from lower regions.. anyway. My opinion is that another person's vomit is what puts me over the edge heaving.It so happens that if there were an Olympics for booger-making, I would have won at least the silver a couple years ago when I was recovering from a transphenoidal surgery. Let me know if you want to hear more; I think I even took a picture of a doozy! As far as I am concerned, other peoples' boogers are more or less just another body fluid; but then again, I haven't had the personal experience of being boogd on.

Take care, and keep up the insight+entertainment,

Stacey

I'm trying not to dry heave here after reading that...I am a vet tech, very little grosses me out, but boogers...barf. There is nothing more gross to me than boogers, especially someone else's.

my fiance sneezes into his t-shirt.  i guess it's better than getting splatted on....  still... hacking up a loogie is pretty bad too.  i try not to do it but sometimes the nast has to come out.

hacked up phlegm is worse than a dry crunchy nose nut. I cannot stand what people so casually spit on the sidewalk.

For me...its sneezes. If anyone sneeze anywhere near me, I can't breathe. Can't move, I just picture all their little sneeze droplets all over me, all over everything, going up my nose and into my lungs...UGHHHH It's horrible. Especially trapped in a car! Give me boogers any day!

You should thank heavens you don't live with my family.  We think it is hysterical when someone gets grossed out.   Have you ever seen yellow raisins?  Those look like boogers.  Bet you'll never eat those now.

My husband works at a Fortune 500 company and he said to me this week, I had to look away during a meeting because a 60+ year old man not only was picking his nose, but you guessed it, eating them!!  Hubby had worked with this guy previously in another town, and they had to remove all the candy dishes because of him reaching in for candy after his finger had been up his nose.  Disgusting!!

Thanks, Dan, or suffering through that tale and to all of you who commented. I needed a good laugh very badly this morning and am still laughing now. Having worked in health care and in schools for many years, raising 3 children and helping out with 3 grandchildren, not much grosses me out. But I do have a tiny booger story.  When my daughter (25) was 4 we went shopping one day and I was wearing a brand new snowy white London Fog trench coat. She said innocently as we walked through the doors of the mall, "Here mommy, take this" and unthinking I reached down only to be handed one of the biggest, greenest, slimiest boogers I have ever seen. No Kleenex available....nothing....I still think about it when I put on white. (eventually found a trash can and rubbed it off on the plastic liner).  Anyway, boogie on y'all!

Boogers are bad, but nowhere near the worst. Vomit is the worst, because not only does it smell as bad or worse than the others, it comes with that awful sound. Plus it's just super messy, and pretty much always comes in large quantities. Poop is the 2nd worst because the smell is comparably bad, and it can be pretty messy.

Blood isn't so bad unless it's accompanied by other gory things, or is coming out of a body (and it takes a lot coming out to be gross. A few drops of blood is irrelevant).

My iiick moment is driving down the road and seeing someone with their finger buried in their nose. Umm, just because you're in a vehicle by yourself doesn't mean WE CAN'T SEE YOU PICK YOUR NOSE! I'm also waiting for a furniture manufacturer to develop a bugger-sensitive fabric that delivers an electric shock to my boys when they casually wipe a booger on the arm of one of our couches! Until then, I'll just continue to wave at car-pickers and make my sons scrub down the furniture on a weekly basis....

I feel sick just writing this. I have always been disgusted by boogers and being a Mom is not helping me get over it. I worked as a Vet Tech and all those up close anatomy lessons were awesome not disgusting. Why can I not handle boogers? So weird.

Hmm, there are very few things that make me gag.  Though I was sure to potty train most of my kids early enough so that I wouldn't have to deal with their poop very much.  I learned that no matter how strong my stomach, diarrhea in a three year old's pants is far too nasty for me to handle.   Oh, my dog has gotten diarrhea a couple of times and THAT makes me gag.  Worst. Thing. Ever.

sorry dan, you lost me at the stocking full of snot!

Bwahahahhaha!!  You sir, are booger phobic. Thanks for the laugh though.

Oh my gosh, I'm laughing so hard! I would be horrified too, but since it didn't happen to me I can laugh about it. It reminded me of when we were driving on the freeway and my hubby spit out the window, my son asked "what would happen if that landed on someones car?" Also, I caught my 3YO eating her boogies in church and reminded her that we don't eat our boogers and she very loudly announces "we pick our burgers and flick them!"

I think that raising children has made this issue far less gross, just as caring for a loved one who, as they near death, expel blood from everywhere had made that pretty much of a non-issue.

I am revolted to see someone spit on a public sidewalk, but I suppose defecating or urinating or flicking boogers are all gross on a public sidewalk.

Given the stocking options I think I skip Christmas, but I'd probably choose the less smelly one for my stocking.

And as Stacy offered, I think the smell of vomit would make that top the list.

I agree with Lynda, farmer blowing = Ew I can't believe you just did that!

I'm bothered by portapottys and the disgust I feel sitting on them. Females bathrooms in general are typically disgusting in public, with toilet paper strewn across the floor and some how women manage to pee on the seats or leave a toilet UN-flushed, gross! But I'm used to having to help people blow thier nose,wipe them selves from being a C.N.A and a mother so in most cases im not bothered just prepared with gloves and sanitizers!

As an elementary school teacher I've had to deal with just about every bodily yuck. Boogers are disgusting, and it's really nasty when you find them on the bottom of the desks, because you do, but, having experienced both, I would rather have children's boogers on my shoes than children's vomit. I think blood is the worst, though, that metallicy, sickly sweet smell makes me want to puke every time.