I had a minor operation on my nose a couple of weeks ago. Not a full Joan Rivers you understand, but a no-less-exciting (and long overdue) procedure to help me breathe properly.
Somehow, I’ve been alive for over thirty years without actually taking a proper breath. Needless to say, this lack of oxygen is entirely to blame for every failure, mistake and error of judgement in my life so far. It is good to have a clean slate now. At last, with air running freely through my hollowed-out conk, I can get on with finding success™!
The day of the operation was quite an exciting one. The only moderately traumatic part was the anesthetic injection, which had to go right up my nose, into secret far-north nasal catacombs I never knew existed. I thought I was an expert in nasal excavation, but apparently there are schnoztic depths to which even I had never ventured.
It may have been my imagination, but I’m fairly certain I could feel the tip of the needle scraping the top of my skull from the inside.
Next, a nurse had to “ground” me. I’d assumed that the surgeon would be using a scalpel to conduct the operation itself, but he actually used a futuristic Star Trek-style laser device for which I had to be “grounded” by some kind of earth wire attached to my [rippling] stomach [muscles]. It was pretty amazing.
The smell of burning proboscis flesh, incidentally, smells exactly like barbecued beef.
Delicious.
All of this means, of course, that I’m no longer a member of that most wretched of all social out-groups: the mouth breathers.
So long, mouth breathers! I don’t need your friendship any more, for I have ascended. What’s more, I was never really your friend at all! Hahah! All the time you were talking, I could only gawk into your massive, wheezing maw as if you were something to throw balls through at a fair.
Mouth breathers, I tear up my membership card and I eat the pieces. You may notice that I can breath while chewing. Necromancy, I know.
Sadly, the last couple of weeks have involved some post-operative chicanery and I’ve been obliged to join the second-most wretched of all social out-groups: the people who use nasal sprays.
Hi there, nasal sprayers! Please be my friends. Pay no heed to the disgraceful way I retired from my position in the Mouth Breathers’ Club. I will never betray you, my favourite new friends.
Nasal sprays must rank among the all-time most arcane and uncharismatic objects in the world, along with ear trumpets and balaclava helmets. While you’re certain someone must have used such things at some point in history, you can’t quite believe that anyone uses them in modern times. There must be at least one ear trumpet or balaclava helmet currently in existence, but you can’t quite recall witnessing their usage.
Imagine my surprise then, when I discovered a whole section of the pharmacy dedicated to nasal sprays. There were about seven-thousand different sprays to choose from, each poised and ready to be squirted up the snouts of the nation.
I chose a spray called a “Saline Nasal Mist” because it was cheap and the description of it as a “mist” felt slightly luxurious.
It wasn’t a “spray” like something a cat would do up a garden fence, but a “mist” capable of caressing my nasal cavities with its soothing mistiness.
Sadly, the French translation on the bottle is “Vaporisateur nasal salin”. No soothing mist for the French. Just a cold, industrial “vaporisateur”. Spare a thought for the unmisted nez.
The instruction on the bottle is to “use for daily hygiene and for rinsing of nasal mucous membranes” with no reference to the operation I underwent. Given that there are so many brands of nasal spray available in the pharmacy, people must be using nasal mists for fun.
Recreational use of a Nasal Saline Mist is perhaps the most perverse thing I’ve ever heard of. If you’re doing it, stop it immediately and turn yourself into the police. Or at least take comfort in the dignity of a less-disgusting vice, like pornography or hard drugs.
In the meantime, however, I am obliged to carry on using the Saline Nasal Mist for the duration of my nose’s convalescence. *squirt*. Ah, that’s the stuff.