BOOGER FOR LIFE

I was over at my sister’s house the other day watching a National Geographic series on desert animals with my 7 year-old niece. One of the featured creatures was the Mongolian "hairy-kneed" Bactrian Camel. It was a grand camel indeed, but it looked very sad, and lonely even, like it needed a friend, or maybe just a hug.

“Uncle B, where is Mongolia?”

Damn, this kid is always trying to stump me. When my sister was pregnant I don’t remember her ever stating that part of my contract as an Uncle was to answer 1000 questions that progressively get harder as the years go by. Perhaps it was in the small print. I am hoping this is just a phase. Lucky for me I had taken a World Geography for Dummies course at La Universidad years ago.

“Well honey, Mongolia is a province up in Canada. They don’t like being in Canada so they speak French to piss…errr, to make everyone mad. Hey pass those Cheetos”

“Uncle B, do camels eat Cheetos?”

How cute is that. Do camels eat Cheetos? Where do these kids get these crazy ideas!

“HaHa! Of course they eat Cheetos, silly. Everyone eats Cheetos.”

When my sister got home, my niece ran up to her, and bouncing around in circles told her how she and I were going to Mongolia to feed Cheetos to the lonely French-speaking camels. My sister shook her head and shot that look over to me that I have learned to decode through the years to mean something like “What the fuck is wrong with you?” It was a look remarkably similiar to the one i got when I told my niece that the smushed squirrels on the road weren't really dead, they were just camoflauging themselves from predators.

On the drive home I was wondering why one must go to Mongolia to find the elusive hairy-kneed Bactrian camel. After all, isn’t this the same animal that can survive under the most extreme and adverse conditions, trekking miles in the hot Canadian desert sun, requiring little rest, and a mere gargle of salt water. Pure evolution alone would suggest we should see these survivalist camels on every street corner in America, but we do not. After exactly three point five countless minutes of deliberation, I concluded that the reason for this Darwinian contradiction is not due to some complex scientific notion of environmental variables but can be attributed completely to feelings, nothing more than feelings.

At a stoplight I put my thinking cap on, which I made out of multi-colored construction paper and goat glue just last week. I wondered how would it feel to be defined solely by your worst possible trait. When I was growing up, I knew kids who were “labeled” at an early age by some cruel observation of one of their peers; defined for life by their most visible defect or most humiliating moment. I prefer to call these “brands”, as labels are painless and easily removed whereas brands burn to the bone of your inner-being and last a lifetime. Examples: Fatty Patty, Two-Ton Tommy, One-Eyed Jack, Four-Finger Francie, Free Lunch Frank, Nose Hair Heal, Stuttering Sammy, Big Head Todd, Easy Alice, Boy Named Sue, et al. There was a kid on my bus in my first years in high school who was known as “Booger Brown”. I had the unfortunate privilege of going to catholic grade school before I attended public high school, so I knew nothing of the kid but learned quickly. Apparently a more popular kid in the 4th grade had caught Master Brown digging for gold in the ol’ honker one day when he thought no one was looking, and from that day forward he was known as “Booger Brown”. By the time I knew him in high school he was already a social recluse who burned the legs off of insects and listened to real bad heavy metal music.

I saw an old chum from high school a few years back and he still referred to our anti-hero as Booger. He shared with me that Booger had flunked out of welding school and joined a biker gang and that was the last he heard. A 30-some year old man still known as Booger, how absolutely sad. I suppose he will most likely end up being Grandpa Booger one day and his wife will be branded at the 25th high school reunion as Mrs. Booger.

This Mongolian “hairy-kneed” camel is no doubt feeling the same shame as Booger Brown. He has chosen to become a social recluse due to the unfortunate branding by the scientific community as being “hairy-knee, like he can help that. He chooses to stay in a remote part of the world so he doesn’t have to deal with the daily ridicule of the smooth-kneed populace, and only travels in caravans because he is socially insecure. He in a sense has joined his own biker gang, a downtrodden group of loners destined to spend their lives as a dysfunctional herd of misfits. Beasts of burden? I think not, and we wonder why they spit at us.

When I got home there was a message on my answering machine from my niece. She rambled on how she was going to learn French, and save her allowance money up for Cheetos for our trip to Mongolia where we would have the bestest time, and that if we didn’t go then I would be a big “Boogerhead” forever, and ever, and ever. Before she hung up the phone I think I heard my sister chuckling in the distance.

Me and my big mouth. Boogerhead. No way, I ain’t going out like that. I picked up the phone and called Air Canada.

“Um, yes, how much for two tickets to Mongolia?”