I saw a guy picking his nose in his car yesterday.  Recently, I was flipped off twice, by two different people while on my way to work.  Last week I nearly tripped over a dog’s leash while jogging around the lake because his inconsiderate owner had the dog ten feet out on a leash and he suddenly darted across the path in front of me.  The little piles of paper towels that gather against the wall in the bathroom near the end of the doors inward arc always make me shake my head in wonder.  Sometimes when I’m sitting on my rooftop deck I allow myself to be entertained by the inability of drivers to parallel park on the street in front of my building.  I often smile when I overhear the odd statements of children passing me by with their parents on the path around the lake.  I have a mild obsession with the free stuff people leave on the curb to be salvaged by the quickest passerby.

From day to day we never know what is going to resonate with us, whether to annoy and tick us off or to tickle our collective funny bone.  Well, maybe we know a little, but the specifics elude us until they happen.  That’s life.  And that’s what this site is about.

Now, about that nose picker.

In and of itself the nose picking is not particularly noteworthy.  People pick their noses. It’s sometimes a necessary evil.  Catching someone picking a nose in public isn’t usually worth more than a chuckle, mainly because people are trying to do it on the sly.  Not this guy.

I was waiting at a stoplight and in my rearview mirror I could see the driver of the car behind me going to town, knuckle deep into his nostril.  He’d dig a little, pull his finger out, take a look, dig a little more.  On and on it went.  Occasionally he’d hold his hand out in front and a little to the side of the steering wheel and, rubbing his thumb against his forefinger, knock off the sticky goo he’d extracted.  Then it was back to picking.

Again, this in and of itself isn’t a big deal.  He’s in the privacy of his own car.  He’s dumping his boogers on his own floorboards.  No harm, no foul.  Except that he wasn’t even trying to do it on the sly.  His wife or girlfriend was sitting right next to him.  Some significant person in his life.  I mean, I doubt it was a hitchhiker but maybe it was.  But I’d think a hitchhiker would jump out of the car at the first sign of the finger to the nose, even if the car were moving.  Just tuck and roll.  

He was just openly picking, not even trying to disguise it as a scratch.  I’d think he’d at least make a play of trying to hide it.  But maybe he and the woman in the car had reached the part in their relationship where even the pretense of hiding it had long since passed.  Maybe she saw it as part of his charm.  But come on, man.  Blow the nose into a Kleenex.  Or at least try to be sly about it.  

Or just wait.