Boogers and Vomit

We get to spend quite a bit of time in the car. We go to Okmulgee a lot. Less now that Jodie works in Broken Arrow, but all the family are down there, and we visit.

To get to Okmulgee is about a 50 minute car ride. Now car rides are generally ok, air-conditioning, decent stereo and cruise control takes care of that. The highway requires little in the way of steering input, and it’s an altogether easy enough experience.

The one significant fly in and otherwise unsullied ointment, is that we generally have three small children occupying the rear seat, much in the manner that you might expect three large and untrained tigers to manage.

They are, in descending order, Mackenzie (7), Michael (5) and Natalie (3). Natalie appears to have crammed about 30 years worth of learning how to be cute and disgusting at the same time, into 3 years.

So, parents out there, and children old enough to read will understand that car rides are a cross between episodes of frightening rage and threats of child abuse, and periods of serenity. The former when they are awake, and the latter when they are asleep.

Just every now and again you have a journey that is FUN. We had one yesterday.

We had spent about 30 minutes taming the tigers with the aforementioned threats of torture (or *questioning*, if your are reading this and happen to be the US President), when Mackenzie suddenly made *vomiting* noises, and announced that Natalie was eating boogers (bogies, to the English).

This was an interesting turn of events, thought Steve. Gotta be some comic value here. Well …. Nat eating boogers was funny enough, but Mackenzie being disgusted was even better.

“Are they crusty and small, or green and slimy”, I asked, innocently.
“Ugh! I’m going to vomit”, said Mackenzie, following this with “and she still has them, under her tongue!”.

“How many do you have Nat?”, I inquired. The answer came back with a lifting of the offending tongue to show everybody “TWO”.

“I’m feeling really, really sick now”, complained child number one.

“Yeah Steve, and if she is then YOU are cleaning the car!” was the comment Jodie felt obliged, rather unnecessarily, I thought, to make.

“Ten green boogers, hanging on the wall,
Ten green boogers, hanging on the wall,
And if one green booger, should accidentally be eaten,
There’d be nine green boogers, hanging on the wall”.

“Good song Steve”, yelled Michael, who is a boy, so *booger* songs by adults rate pretty highly with him.

“Mom, make him stop. I’m really gonna vomit!”, squeaked the seven year old.

“Ten cups of vomit, standing on the wall” ……………….

Well you know the rest (

Fifteen minutes of rolling around laughing, while trying to drive and avoid the usual crowd of cell phone using, mascara applying and donut eating drivers so often bent on running you off the road, made the journey FUN !!!

No, she never did vomit …….. phew.