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WE GAVE AT THE ORIFICE
by C.L. Halvorson
My sister, Diana had, and still does
for that matter, a very mischievous streak in her; especially when it
came to seeing what she could get other people to do. Thankfully, we
lived very close to the hospital emergency room as children. Our poor
sister, Sara, was her target for the most part. Being the trusting soul
she was, Sara would agree to try anything Diana came up with.
Sara had a toy beaded necklace. The
necklace broke and she was trying to figure out how to repair it.
Diana, seeing this, had a brilliant idea. She sat on the back stoop next
to Sara.
“You know,” Diana began, “I bet those
beads could be used for other things.”
“Like what?” Sara asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe fit into
other things.”
“Like what?” sometimes Sara had a
rather limited vocabulary.
“Hmmm, well like I bet they would up
fit up your nose,” surmised Diana.
“Why would I want to stick a bead in my
nose?”
“Just to see if it fit.”
Sara eyed the blue plastic bead in her
fingers. She eyed Diana. In spite of herself, she had allowed Diana to
get her curiosity going. Tentatively, Sara started to insert the bauble
into her nostril. It fit!
“See? I told you it would fit,” Diana
was quite pleased that her theory had proved itself out. “Try another
one.”
“If I stick one in the other side I
won’t be able to breathe,” said Sara.
“Just make sure you put it in with the
hole pointing down so you can breathe through the hole,” it was truly
amazing to see a criminal mastermind at work.
Sara was reluctant, but willing. She
put the second bead into her other nostril taking special care to make
sure she positioned it so that she could breathe through the hole. The
second one also fit and Sara wasn’t turning blue from a lack of oxygen.
Of course, she looked like she was storing nuts for the winter in her
nose, but science wasn’t always pretty.
Scientific study has also shown us,
that if you blow into the open end of a hollow reed a musical note is
produced. If you blow across the top of an open Coke bottle you will
also produce a note. That day’s experiment showed us that if you
breathe through the hole of a bead that’s up your nostril you will also
produce a musical note. Diana was delighted by this additional
discovery; but the sound made Sara suddenly panic. Try as she might she
could not dislodge the jewels from her nostrils.
“They won’t—tweet—come out—tweet!”
Sara screamed near hysteria.
“Sure they will you just have to get
hold of them. Here, hold still,” Diana started toward Sara’s nose with
grimy fingers.
“I don’t—tweet—want your dirty—tweet—fingers—tweet—up
my nose!” she pushed Diana away and ran into the housing calling and
whistling for Mama. Diana was hot on her heels.
“What’s the matter?” Mama asked as she
met up with the pair in the kitchen.
“Diana—tweet—made me shove beads
up my nose and now—tweet—I whistle. They won’t come out!”
Crying and panic were making the whistling louder.
Our mother dragged Sara down the
hallway to the bathroom. Mama sat her on the toilet lid, pulled out the
tweezers and tilted Sara’s head back. Mama tried to gently extract the
foreign invaders but it’s difficult to pull beads out of a kid’s nose
without taking nose hair with it.
“Ow—tweet!” hollered Sara.
“We’ll have to take you to the
emergency room. Whatever you do don’t sniff them up further.”
“Oh no, I didn’t think of that! Tweet—I could suck them up into my—tweet—brain and die!” Sara
could always find the worse case scenario in any situation.
Mama hustled us all into the car and
headed for the emergency room. Once there Mama spoke to the nurse while
Sara sat there crying and whistling. After checking in, Donny Osmond
came out to collect Sara. That’s right, Donny Osmond. All three of us
just stared at him dumbstruck. We knew Donny was a very nice boy, but
imagine singing on all those records and TV shows and still having time
to work at the hospital. What a guy! In actuality, he was a nurse at
the hospital who bore a striking resemblance to Donny. Had you going
there for a second, didn’t I?
He took Sara’s hand and told her he was
going to take her back to a room. Diana and I offered our immediate
assistance. Mama glared at us and told us to go sit in the waiting
room. We were crushed! Sara rose from her seat and looked at us
gloatingly over her shoulder. She took the handsome young nurse’s hand
and flirted with him right in front of us! Looking back, though, I
doubt he was terribly impressed. Sara was more than fifteen years his
junior and, try as she might, it’s darned near impossible to look
seductive while whistling through beads up your nose.
The emergency room doctor was able to
retrieve one of the beads but Sara had accidentally sucked the other one
up too far for him to remove. After fifteen minutes convincing Sara
that there was no way for it to end up in her brain he told Mama that
“this too would pass”, if you catch my drift. And pass it did about
three days later.
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