Boogers September 28, 2004

Popped up in the back of the LAV, we scouts pretty much reside in a perpetual cloud of dust. The thickness of the dust will vary depending on the terrain, between light enough that it barely registers and so thick it blocks out the sun, plunging us into darkness. There is a type of desert out here that consists of a moon-dust that kicks up very easily, coats every surface, invades every orifice, muddies every moist spot, and fills every pocket and crevice. This stuff even seeps through the bandana I use to cover my face. Scouts come out of these dust clouds looking like mimes. It often gets thick enough that I can’t breathe just through my nose and I end up with mud in my mouth, between my teeth.

One of the consequences of this kind of dust-laden environment is the necessity of constant nasal passage maintenance. If you dig often enough, you can get it out of your nose while it’s still just mud, but if you let it go for a while it dries into the biggest, hardest boogers you’ve ever experienced. Picking these things is like performing surgery or giving birth. It’s slightly disturbing to think about how much mass I’ve pulled out of my head in recent weeks.

And it can be quite a painful process, picking your nose. The way the stuff dries, it’s inevitably attached to at least a few, usually a patch of nosehairs. My record is fifteen nosehairs in one booger, during whose extraction I heard a distinct and horrible tearing noise.

Corporal P_______ had one with over fifty nosehairs in it. I had to extract one from G____’s nose with a pair of pliers. I wonder how much longer the hair in my nose can possibly last. For that matter, how long can the skin inside my nose last?