insert thumb here

this summer i'm working at a service ranch for the fourth year in a row. when i tell people this, one of the first questions they ask me is if it's a camp for troubled youth. afterall, if it's not girls/scout camp it must be a reformation program for wayward kids who need the evil dried out of them (hence the eight-day desert hikes with nothing but a bottle of water and a fist full of peanuts). but on the contrary, the ranch i work for is neither boondoggled nor butt-kicking and if the kids are troubled, it's only in as much as all youth are troubled.

this ranch is located on eighty acres of juniper forest near the Wastach Plateau and most days it's pretty hot and dusty. that means my nose has to do more filtering and that means more boogers - the kind you can't ignore. now i was brought up by goodly parents who taught me to refrain from picking my nose in public. it's an ugly and offensive habit. but i've noticed that several people have found a way around this all-but-universal rule... and that is the thumb-pick. indeed, the thumb is the key!

for some wonderful reason picking one's nose with one's thumb, while it's not admirable, is permissible and therefore it happens quite often in public - even church. so now that i'm filtering all of this dust and making lots of tar-boogers in the midst of the campers and my fellow staff members, i find myself thumb-picking on a regular basis. i honestly don't know if this is okay or if i'm really embarrassing myself (and my mom if she could see me). i admit i feel a little sheepish sometimes when i thumb-pick but other times i don't even realize i'm doing it until i'm well under way.

i guess the most important thing to keep in mind is nosebleeds. even if it really is just an arid climate issue, people are still going to wonder if i was picking my nose.