Earlier this evening as I sat at a traffic light initially minding my own business, I casually looked over to see what was going on next to me. We were three wide at the light. There was a guy in an SUV in the lane next to me who hadn’t pulled all the way up to the light which left me with a full view of the late model Honda sedan two lanes over from me. In that car sat a lady who appeared to be clean, professional and in her mid-30’s.

Nothing abnormal about that scene so far, right? Well, I held my gaze at her long enough to see that she had one of her booger hooks stuffed in her nose to the second knuckle aggressively scraping her nasal bacon. There was no looking away at that point. She stared straight ahead and relied upon the cloak of invisibility she must have thought her car provided to hide her vile habit from public view.

Ladies and gentlemen, I haven’t even reached the climax of this story yet. After hooking the booger with her long and spindly digit, she withdrew her finger and its harvest from her nostril, did a barely perceptible pinch and roll and ATE THAT BOOGER! (I’m getting the willies just typing this.)

Time seemed to stand still while this was going on so I don’t know how long I was there but she did this three times at that traffic light. Not once did she turn her head to see who might be watching her engage in this deplorable habit.

The light changed and I didn’t know what to do so I laid on my horn as I drove next to her. I’m not sure what I hoped to achieve by doing that but I desperately wanted her to know that I knew of her dark habit so that she might be a little ashamed. It wouldn’t end like that though as her head and eyes were locked in a forward-looking position even as I honked the horn in one of those sustained honks (probably because the horn on a Volvo S80 sedan is not nearly as impressive as you might think it would be). Evidently the guy next to me watched the vile show she put on for us because he looked at me and smiled and shook his head and then started laughing at me as I honked my horn.

I don’t know about you people, but I always thought that talk about people eating their own boogers was just an exaggeration because nobody would really do something like that. That’s something that separates human beings from apes. Well, I can tell you that she walks among us – she, with her booger fingers and booger breath.

If I’m missing something, and it’s a commonly accepted underground habit for adult human beings to pick and eat their own boogers, and you’re one who does that, please, never tell me you do. I can overlook many character/personality flaws to see the good in people but if you pick and eat your own boogers, we simply can no longer be friends.