In my run-up to Harry Potter Finale, I am re-reading the books and watching the films (while attired in my tiara and waving both my wands), AND — hang in there…I’ll make the connection in just three, two, ……. I find myself constantly amazed at J.K.’s ability to work boogers into every book.

Yes, if it’s not one of the Weasley brothers talking about them…hmmm……a family of five brothers and one little sister…are we surprised? Mais no! …yes, if it’s not Weasleys, it’s booger-flavored beans on the candy trolley or some such nonsense. Clearly, kids are fascinated by boogers. As a child who had horrible allergies and sinus infections, who slept like the elephant man (sitting up) most of her first twenty-some-odd years of life and who has blown her nose into more tissues and hankies than Imelda had shoes, boogers were just about the last thing I wanted anything to do with.

On the other hand — when I was about 10, I fell on the floor furnace and gouged out a large part of my knee. It should have had stitches (we know this now), but I was the child of a farm daughter. You didn’t stitch stuff unless it was a knife wound — a really, really BIG knife wound — like maybe a pitchfork through your leg.

So for weeks and weeks (perhaps months and months), I went about with this massive hole in various stages of healing, and, as kids are wont to do, periodically ripped off the developing scab with the very large band-aid I would be using to cover it on any given day. At some point, it began to smell — bad.
Not “badly,” mind you, but “bad” as in “smellbad” — a whole new level of odiforous.

So what did we little girls (sugar and spice and ever’thing nice) do? We used it to our advantage. Yes, I distinctly remember that for a period of about 2-3 weeks, anytime the boys would chase us, take away our jump-ropes, etc., we would pick out one boy, chase him down, hold him down (the other boys NEVER helped him, of course) and — make him smell my knee.

Now I was never a promiscuous girl growing up. If you went back to my high school and asked, “Anyone here ever sleep with Ellis?” you won’t get a single yes (if they’re truthful). Much to my chagrin, however, several DOZEN business and civic leaders of Memphis today can truthfully say — some forty-odd years ago, they smelled my knee — and once was enough.

“It’s green.”

“Green?”

“Green. But it looks really good!”

“It’s green.”

“Yeah, but don’t worry, I can fix it.”

This is not the conversation you want to have with a girlfriend who has tasked you with coloring her hair. Unless, of course, she wanted green. Which was not the case.

In any regular friendship, this is where the dyee cries and curses the dyer for ruining her hair. Lucky for me, the dyee in question was my fifteen year old cousin, I’ll call her Stella. There were no tears or curses, just a pondering in the mirror and an eventual “Mom’s going to kill us,” to which I replied, “That’s okay, I have power of attorney over you until Sunday.”

Last week I had the pleasure of having Stella visit for four days. She lives in Colorado Springs where she moved with her mother and brother when she was nine. From that time on she and I have been great friends. We both love to read, play string instruments and have the same sense of humor. I like her because she gets me.

Family is very important to me and all the more because my extended family seems to be shrinking over time as people have their own families and move away or as they get older and cannot do what they once could. I grew up with cousins all around me, even living with a cousin in college. When Stella’s mom moved back to Colorado Springs with her family it was like a gift to me. Her mom had been like a sister to me growing up and when she came back, she came with two great kids. Two more cousins for me!

When I told people my young cousin was coming to visit they asked me, “What are you going to do with a fifteen year old girl?” The notion of spending four days with a teenager was lost on some of my friends. But I was excited to share with her some aspects of my life here. I don’t get to see her enough and often we are relegated to comments on Facebook and catching up at holidays. Dying her hair green was unexpected but gave us a good laugh. Though we fixed it the next day, I know it will be something I remember for a long time.

There is a translation of Cicero over the doors to the CU library. It says “Who knows only his own generation remains always a child”. I was told the intention of this statement is to remind us that we must be aware of our past so that we don’t make the same mistake in our future. I prefer to think of this in a more spherical way. I think it is important to try and know all the generations, past present and future. I recommend befriending a teenaged person in general, and one who is related to you specifically. You gain perspective on the direction the world is going in, you get to laugh, you get to have those teaching moments that are so rare and you might actually learn something. But most importantly, you get to establish the foundation of a lifelong friendship with someone who has to like you. Because you’re related to them. And you can tell their mother if they don’t.

This all-consuming focus on disgusting things must be a deep-seated, perhaps even archaic-deep-in-the-brain-stem survival mechanism. You can imagine stone-age nieces and nephews roaming out and about the savannah, looking for stuff to eat and watching out for stuff that could kill them, such as crocodiles, snakes, lions, leopards, hyenas, rhinos, hippos, buffaloes and yes even ostriches. This intrepid little band of nieces and nephews errantly wanders into a liquefying mass of bones, hide, tissue and squirming fly larvae. The conversation might go like this:

“Eeeeeewwww, aaaaackkk whooooo yaaah sheesh aaaaayeee!”
“Oya oya oya, aye yae yae, whoyah.”
“Naaa naaa naaa, onnooo noo, waaaahhh.”

Let me translate:
“Eeeeeewwww, aaaaackkk whooooo yaaah sheesh aaaaayeee!” (“What the…? You have to be kidding me.”)
“Oya oya oya, aye yae yae, whoyah.” (“What is that smell? Should we eat it?)
“Naaa naaa naaa, onnooo noo, waaaahhh.” (“You first. I’m going to puke. Let’s get the grok out of here… wait, what are those wiggly things squirming around in there? Get a stick and poke it.”)

As they encounter a seeping puddle of something green and slimy, your nieces and nephews can rely on their intense interest to keep them in full observation mode, but their sense of smell and taste (if they get that far) will keep them from ingesting at least huge quantities of suppurating masses.

Kids have a deep-seated interested in all things gross and disgusting. And they have names for these items, but they aren’t their real names.

You can add a touch higher learning and yes elegance by teaching your nieces and nephews the proper names for those things that simultaneously attract and repel them. Here are some substances that draw the rapt attention of your nieces and nephews, and which real names they will forever appreciate learning. (The child’s translation is in parentheses).

Nasal crust (boogers).
Flatulence (farts).
Mucus or nasal discharge (snot).
Maggots or fly larvae (Eeeeww, what ARE those things?)
Feces, scat, or spoor (poop and, well, let’s leave it a that).
Humus. (icky rotting plant stuff).
Carrion. (icky rotting animal stuff).
Mold. (mold).
Fungus. (toadstools).
Cerumen. (ear wax).
Saliva (spit, drool).
Lachrymal fluid. (tears).
Pus (pus).
Vomitus (puke).

And Floaters. If you introduce floaters, be prepared for stunned silence. Those floaty things in your field of vision tend to increase as you get older, so young kids may have no earthly idea what you are talking about.

So the next time you and your intrepid little band of nieces and nephews encounter something disgusting, you can cheerily produce all the proper names they need to call out all that they observe.

“That pile of carrion harbors a dandy collection of immature blowfly larvae and the whole thing smells like spoor and flatulence and humus. It makes my eyes fill with lachrymal fluid and my nose with mucus. I may have to vomit so hard that it will discharge cerumen from my head. Let’s look for a minute. Who wants to taste it? Me neither. Glad I didn’t step in it.

Hey, who wants ice cream?”

Body parts, too, have both technical colloquial names. That’s for another day.

The psychiatrist asked the patient, “Do you hear voices in your head?” “Yes, I do,” replied the patient. The psychiatrist thought to himself, with his own voice in his head, “Aha, he hears voices!”

Recently I was doing a little training session with a youth triathlon club. We were working on mental toughness, specifically how to deal with unhelpful internal chatter. You may have unhelpful voices saying unhelpful things to you, such as “You never were any good,” or “What makes you think you can do this?” or any number of nasty little messages. Well, so do seven-year-olds, believe it or not. And when you are training or racing in triathlon, those unhelpful voices can give you trouble. So this youth triathlon team and I were working on how to deal with that unhelpful self-talk.

One way to deal with these voices is to make them funny. So, during the experiment (I wanted to call it an “exercise” but the kids didn’t like that word, so we called it an “experiment.” Evidently, exercise is work, and experiments are fun.)

Anyway…

I wanted to lighten up that unhelpful internal chatter. Try this now: think of an unhelpful internal voice and what it says to you. Now…have that voice say the same thing it always says, but instead, have it inhale a huge lungful of helium, and then say its phrase in that weird Minnie Mouse helium voice. I’ll bet you are giggling. That funny voice takes the sting out of that unhelpful voice and makes it no big deal anymore.

Anyway…

I had all the kids recall an unhelpful voice, then asked them to dress up the speaker of that voice as a clown, with orange and green hair and giant shoes and big, puffy pants, then say the phrase. They all giggled. The unhelpful voice became not so vexing anymore. Then I had them try it on another unhelpful message, with the clown suit and with the helium voice. They giggled again.

Then I had them think about a time in the future when they are likely to run into that voice, and practice making it funny looking and funny sounding. That way, next time they run into a situation, they already know what to do.
They laughed even more.
Sometimes these unhelpful internal voices have an important message, and using these lightening techniques helps us all hear the message better. And sometimes these voices are full of nonsense and tell us things that just aren’t true. We don’t suck. We aren’t useless. We aren’t no good.
To break it down:

1. Ask your niece if she has any unhelpful voices in her head, either hers or someone else’s. She doesn’t need to tell you what that voice says.
2. Tell her that this voice is going to say what it always says, but before it does, she gets to dress it up really funny, then have it inhale a big, giant lungful of helium.
3. Tell her to let the voice say what it wants to, all clownish and helium.
4. Ask her if that voice bothers her anymore.

Teach your nieces and nephews how to lighten up that voice.  It’s fun and it really helps them not to have to listen to all that nonsense.  Imagine what your life would have been like if you had learned this technique when you were seven.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmzx05z0mJ0