Pea

A pea.

One of nature's most innocuous foods. So utterly non-descript, and dare I say bland, that no one suspects that they are actually the king of vegetable villians.

How can this be? How can something that amounts to basically being a little green sphere of ..... well, whatever peas are made of, be so darnright sinister?

Perhaps the reason rests in the fact that they are the perfect size to fit right up a little kid's nose.

Which is exactly what happened two nights ago. My undeniably brilliant, and certain genius of a son, Lachlan stuck a single darn pea right up his schnoz.

Well, how can that be the fault of the pea? If my child is so dang smart why didn't he have the sense to refrain from placing vegetable matter into his head? It's because those little peas are ... crafty. Yes, crafty. Take a look at a pea sometime. Their innocent little green shapes just rest on your plate looking as if they would never harm a fly. But their innocent appearance belies a dark hidden agenda. They want to be put up kids noses. They cry out for it.

I can only imagine that to a 2 or 3 year old, the mere existence of a pea calls out for some nasal spelunking. "C'mon kid do it, stick me up there, it'll be fun!!!!" It's simply the absolute perfect shape for this activity.

Or maybe not. Maybe peas are indeed non-sentient beings, and my son falls into a long line of kids who just do stupid stuff sometimes. Whatever, the fact is, he put a pea up his nose.

Man, that sucker was right up there. At first I thought I could just sort of fish it out by pushing down on his nose, but nope, it had somehoow gone really far. I got a flashlight and could see its evil greeness (see? there I go again with the dark agenda stuff again) hiding well into his nasal ..... uh... cavity I guess you'd call it.

So, I did whatever any semi-panicky parent would do. I pushed it up into his nose even further. Somehow the logic of this made sense at the time. "If I push it up further, then it'll fall down the back of his throat and he'll spit it out".

But, it didn't work out like that at all. It was just stuck further.

I then did whatever a now medium-panicky parent would do, I checked the internet. Of course I received a bazillion hits on the key word search: "toddler, pea, up-nose". Per usual, the overwhelming first piece of advice from these esteemed medical websites I hurriedly perused was: "Whatever you do, do not push the object further up the child's nose."

Fabuluous. My wife however, was her usual calm self during this whole escapade. She put both kids in the bath (which helped calm poor Lachlan down), left me to look after them, and then went onto the internet to do her own virtual investigation. I imagine her key word searches included the terms: "husband, doofus, remedy".

Whilst in the bath, my pea-inflicted son did indeed calm down and I kept trying to get him to put his finger on the opposite nostril and BLOW! Some seriously ridiculous pantomiming took place on my part. Bless him, he tried and tried, but without success.

I was about to give up hope, gird myself for another trip to the ER (Good evening Mr. Huegel, what dumb-ass thing did you let your kid do now?), and started to finish up their bath. I implored with Lachlan to give it one final shot.

It happened as if in slow motion. A tiny green ball flew through the air and landed in the bath with an unceremonial plop. He had done it. He had ejected the Offending Pea.

I let out a whoop of victory. Victory over vegetables! I was high-fiving myself. I don't know why I did this, but I did. I high-fived my kid. No trip to the ER, no insidious co-pay, no admission of failure. My kid sorted it out himself. I was elated.

My wife came back into the bathroom, smiled and sensibly congratulated Lachlan (no high-fives), pulled the kids gently out of the bath, and got them ready for bed. Ah, life. It really is beautiful sometimes.

I still have reservations about the innocence of a pea though.