Help! My Booger is Trying to Kill Me!

Warning: The following post is real highbrow writing. If you aren’t prepped for a piece of literature that should be read on Masterpiece Theater, this may not be the post for you.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been out of shape. I’ve never been to the point of huffing and wheezing as I make my way up a staircase, but there is a good chance my legs would fall off and crumble into dust if I ran a half-marathon.

Since early last summer, I have been actively trying to rectify this situation. I would run and lift weights. Unfortunately, my legs would hate me after each running session and refuse to do work the next day. I would feel like a pirate with a peg leg as I walked about. Of course, I didn’t have a cool eye patch or sword, so I just looked ridiculous.

I had what scientists and doctors call “ridiculously tight leg muscles that will eventually kill you, you stupid fat slob.” In layman’s terms, this meant that my legs had no flexibility whatsoever, so when I was done running my legs turned into leg shaped pieces of granite. Since my current regimen of sitting and watching TV didn’t seem to be helping, I tried stretching. When that didn’t work, I tried begging my legs. Unfortunately legs do not have ears (Today’s anatomy lesson!), so my cries fell on deaf… well, deaf legs, I guess.

Having exhausted all of my possibilities, I tried something in January that I never thought I would try. This was a workout that seemed designed for women and obnoxious hippies who don’t bathe.

I tried yoga.

As a man, yoga seems like the wimpiest workout of all time. Working out is supposed to involve grunting and lifting and yelling and punching. Yoga involves silently standing and breathing. While I am all for breathing, I did not think this would be something for me seeing as how I had testosterone and avoided patchouli like the plague.

I was totally wrong. After 30 minutes, I felt relaxed and stress free. My legs were looser than they had ever been and I actually felt like I had gotten an excellent workout. I vowed that I would do this again and again and again. There’s no way this could ever be unpleasant, I thought.

In yoga, the goal is to accomplish “moksha.” I don’t have the slightest clue as to what this is. It kind of sounds like some sort of root or vegetable, but that wouldn’t make a lot of sense. It is supposed to have something to do with liberating yourself from suffering. I don’t understand all of this moksha stuff, but I will tell you one thing: there is no way to achieve moksha with a giant booger in your nose.

After a couple successful sessions of yoga, I felt great. Yesterday, I decided to continue the trend. I was beginning to come down with a bit of a cold, but I was doing YOGA, not running or hoisting a car. Having a cold won’t stop you from standing in a strange position and breathing.

After ten minutes of warm up, we got to the heavy stuff. I moved into downward upward parakeet (I do not remember the names of yoga positions), and I felt it. Jammed deep into my left nostril, there sat the largest booger on the planet Earth.

With each breath, this booger moved deeper into my head. It was like inhaling a golf ball. By the time I had left parakeet and moved into the flaming eagle (Pretty sure this isn’t a real position, either.), my head felt like it had been corked. The pressure was building and I was pretty sure my head would explode.

I desperately tried to move it. Wiggling my nose about didn’t help. I could have tried to pick my nose, but my arms were in “victory position.” There was no escaping this booger.

My last chance was my elbow. With my arms in the position they were, I could just reach my nose with my left elbow. I stretched and, with a great deal of work, finally reached the problem area. I gently rubbed and, finally, the sweet air hit my lungs as the troublesome booger slipped out of my airway.

I finished my yoga session and felt all the relaxation of a person who had been slowly suffocating for the last 15 minutes. I was tense all over. The cares of the world had not melted away. In fact, I had added a new care of the world onto the stack, now being forced to worry about death by booger.

I wish I had a moral for this story. I wish it was deep and meaningful. I don’t have one, though. I guess I could pull some sort of “you can always accomplish your goals,” but that seems a bit obvious and overdone. If you really want that moral, go watch “Rudy.”

What we’ve all really learned today is yoga is a great work out AS LONG AS YOU CAN BREATHE. Without breathing, it becomes a death defying stunt that even Houdini would have a hard time escaping. How is one supposed to get a booger out of their nose if their arms are wrapped around their head and your hands intertwined together?

I will continue to do yoga. I will keep doing it until I am no longer a fat slob. It is a personal goal that I intend on accomplishing. The only things that will stop me are my boogers.

Those bad boys can be vicious.

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