Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Vegetable extraction


Of all the titles bestowed upon a Daddy, "chief vegetable extractor" is among the least desirable.

A few weeks back, Mommy was away preparing our house in Albuquerque for its upcoming sale and seeing that all of our worldly possessions got packed in a truck. (The house sale itself being a tale worthy of title "momentous.")

Meanwhile, Daddy and Quinn were left to fend for themselves. Being the temporary bachelors they were, the boys shared a pizza on their first night together. On night two, Daddy decided to be responsible and serve a proper meal, vegetables and all. Green peas it was.

Before long, Quinn had a finger deep inside his nostril and a guilty look on his face. Using a flashlight, Daddy spotted the offending green sphere nestled comfortably where his fingers couldn't reach.

Extraction attempts by tweezer and a suction didn't work. After several calls to an on-call nurse, and a few regretful curses, Daddy was ready to throw in the towel and make a trip to the emergency room. A pea stuck up a nostril isn't a critical threat, but the nurse warned against it.

So in a last ditch effort, Daddy, at the advice of the nurse, shot a poof of air up Quinn's clear nostril. With the force of a BB gun, the pea shot out from his nose with a boom. It was a momentous occasion. Both Quinn and Daddy cheered. Today, in my memory, it all happens in slow motion, like a made-for-film recreation of a historic moment.

The next night, Quinn and Daddy went out for buffalo wings.