May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up...My Nose?

At lunch, I had a rather intense meeting. All went well, and my customers and I were walking back out to my car so I could deliver them to their offices. It was around 1:10 p.m., and our talk had been rather extended. As I was walking down the sidewalk to my car, I remember taking a deep breath and exhaling quietly (a great stress reducer).

My next breath was a shocker.

A huge insect flew up my nose. (Well, at least, I thought it was huge. It felt huge.)

My thoughts were, in the following order:

(1) This didn’t just happen to me, did it?
(2) How can I handle this in a graceful manner?

I unlocked my truck doors, diving for the Kleenex box. I start blowing my nose as gracefully as possible. Nothing happens.

I confess what has happened to my customers. They laugh. I don’t.

Customer 1: “We had two lost time incidents last month due to insects flying into people’s ears. On one of them, the doctor couldn’t ever find one of the insects, but the employee swore that insect was still in his ear.”

Me: “Well, dude, this insect is still in my nose, too. I can feel it!”

I deliver them to their respective offices, all the while trying to eject the insect from its randomly chosen perch, somewhere up my nose. I drive to the post office. I’m pretty calm, believing that what I feel is just the “sensation” that something foreign has been in my nose, and that with all that blowing, it has to be, by now, (a) dead and (b) expelled.

I go into the post office, and am immediately confronted with a honking huge line of waiting patrons. I join the line, and start sneezing. No, I didn’t take any Kleenex in with me…stupid, huh? Everybody’s blessing me, and I’m thinking , “If y’all only knew. How am I going to handle this? What if whatever this is inches its way up into my brain?”

I get through the 14 minute line, handle my business, and go back out to my truck. I grab the Kleenex, and give it one more college try, and…Voila! At approximately 1:50 p.m., I delivered some type of flying ant type thing, STILL FREAKIN' ALIVE, with wings almost ½” long. And no, I didn’t weigh it, or name it, or take a photo of it. This is the only evidence of the birth certificate you’ll see. And, it is now dead. It will NOT fly up anyone else's nose. I made sure. I promise.

But... Holy Snot, Batman.