So this, it turns out, was the Father’s Day I had Cheetos up my nose. Not in a funny way, but more a sort of philosophical reverie way, like that glazed look you get after you’ve had seven ice cream sandwiches and a heat stroke. This was the latest result of my parentage principles, which I have been asked to share with you via this occasional column. (Because, no doubt, I’m a father of three — Dempsey, 3, Winona, 6, Charlene, 13, and Cleve, 16 — and also, I own a dirt bike.)
It may seem like a cliché to have Cheetos up your nose. Just the sort of thing a three-year-old would do. Which I am not. But a parent who won’t put snack items near his mucous membranes when duty calls just isn’t trying hard enough. Jeanie was out of town and had been muttering a lot since Cleve developed a personal relationship with pinworm, so I was on father patrol. I woke up that morning to a wet, thwocky sound like somebody had vacuumed up Jello. I was dreaming about a trip to Sweden with Marlon Brando involving an urgent delivery of cravats, so I wasn’t entirely unhappy to be awakened.
Still, it was a little disconcerting to open my eyes and see Dempsey six inches away with that blank-eyed pterodactyl look three-year-old boys always have before something happens involving the emergency room. The thwocky sound was down to a rope of snot that was lowering and snapping back with every breath. This was not, apparently, intentional. Rising up behind him like a crazed moon was Winona.
I closed my eyes and held still, but it was too late. There are few sensations like having someone else’s snot inside your nose. It was an experience that Dempsey did not want his dear old dad to die without. It’s safe to say I was fully awake by the time he’d completed the operation in question for reasons only three-year-olds and pterodactyls understand. Winona thought it was pretty funny, but the involuntary full-body twitch (and accompanying howl) that resulted send both of them over the side of the bed to, fortunately, a well-carpeted landing. They wouldn’t stop laughing.
Anyway. Dempsey’s snot was marking his trail. By halfway through breakfast — under the intense and disdainful stares of Charlene and Cleve, I might add — every cabinet, box of cereal, and piece of furniture in the house was dotted with mucous de Dempsey. Somehow he’d ended up with a bowl of corn flakes punctuated by Cheetos.
You see where this is headed, but in the moment, I thought I’d stumbled upon an idea on par with, say, the spacesuit. I said, “Dempsey, look here.” He swivelled his noggin toward me, and by the time he’d completed that maneuver, I had two of those little caveman clubs of powdered-cheese goodness right up in those nostrils.
He looked at me as if I’d micturated upon his Hot Wheels again, his eyes perfectly circular. “Use your words” was not operative with Dempsey. It was that little-kid moment that’s like when a model rocket reaches its highest altitude and pauses there for the briefest of seconds before the fall begins. I thought the waterworks were going to kick in. But at least the snotfall had been switched off. Instead, the grubby claws came up, and he just yanked those Cheetos right out of there. He smiled as the snot rope unfurled anew.
I did have the rapt attention of the other three, if nothing else. “Wait a minute, Demps,” I said. “Don’t take ’em out. It’s fun. Right, kids?”
The other three stared at me, their spoons at rest in their cereal bowls. “Yeah, it’s the best, Dad,” Charlene put in.
“I’m so out of here,” Cleve added.
It was down to Winona, Dempsey, and me. I knew where this had to go. Fortunately, Winona’s one of those kids who rolls with anything. To my surprise, she reached over and shoved two Cheetos from his cereal bowl right up in her schnoz, no problem. Dempsey turned to watch her.
“See, Demps?” I said. “Fun!” I made like Winona and shoved two milky cheese puffs in there, too. It’s worth noting that milk-covered Cheetos sliding into your nostrils feel exactly like how I’d imagine it feels when snails make a break for your sinus cavities. I smiled. Probably a touch wanly.
Dempsey, dim bulb though he may be, was suddenly in. He rammed a couple up his nose, too. It looked for all the world like his snot ropes had calcified into a couple of orange stalactites.
Crisis ended. We spent the morning talking like we had colds, going about our business with Cheetos in place. Thanks to their milky coating, they stayed in place with no trouble. After a couple of hours, I decided to risk Cheeto removal. I got Dempsey in front of me, and yanked on the left Cheeto. And nothing happened except Dempsey got a weird, puzzled look. It was like watching a caveman think. The left Cheeto stayed put. I yanked harder. Dempsey got a really worried face. Right Cheeto stayed put. Ditto with Winona’s.
I gave mine a tug, and a whole lot of nothing happened. In fact, it felt really weird and disproportionately painful at the same time, like when a nose hair gets caught in the trimmer. Turns out milk and Cheetos make glue. We all looked at each other, and I tried to smile. It’s hard to smile when something’s tugging on a nose hair. It’s also hard to talk right with Cheetos in your nose.
“Keeb on blaying, kids!” I said, raising my arms like I was conducting a choir or something.
Dempsey was weighing that possibility when the doorbell rang. “Just keeb blaying,” I said. I headed for the door trying to figure out how I was going to work this whole Cheeto thing with whoever was there. I opened the door a crack, and looked out sideways, nostrils well-hidden.
“Son?” my Dad said. “Why are you looking out sideways?”
I just opened the door enough to reveal the Cheeto full monty. “Won’t cub out,” I said.
I’ll save you the gory details, but after trying all sorts of ways to get those suckers out, we gave up. My dad drove the three of us to the ER, and in a series of weird indignities, the Cheetos were removed. Dempsey ate his.
When my dad dropped us off, I said, “Uh, happy Father’s Day?”
“Just get out,” he said. “All of you.” But in a nice way. We had him come in long enough for the kids to run upstairs for the gift we’d bought him, a Marlon Brando signature cravat.
I offered him a Cheeto while we waited.
“I’m good,” he said. “I’m good.”•
To reach Breaking Dad, leave a message under home plate at the Mount Sugarloaf baseball diamond.
