Florida. 2021.

Faces have holes in them. We don’t often think about our face holes until there is a problem with one. Kids are curious. When a child finds something that seems to fit perfectly in one of the face holes, well, I think you can guess what happens. 

When L– was 7, he came up to me randomly while I was cleaning the bathroom and said “I need some nose medicine“.

He has some rough allergies and asthma, so that’s where my mind went first. Then he started crying and said he didn’t want to get in trouble. Anytime your children cry it breaks your heart. Unless they’ve lost for the twelfth time after challenging me to Mario Kart 64 and didn’t I tell you turds I’m the king and I’ll crush you?

Turns out he discovered that a green M&M was about the size of his nostril and shoved it up there and it disappeared. If he hadn’t been so upset I would have started laughing. I sat him up on the bathroom counter and pretended I knew what I was doing. The flashlight on my phone was too awkward to hold. 

“C–, do we have a small flashlight?” I called to my wife.

“I think so, why?” She replied.

“No reason, nothing happened.” I said, perfectly believably.

“Do we need to go to urgent care?” I hear her rummaging in the junk drawer, the one with all the random cables and the scissors with the orange handle that seems to come with every house.

“Uh, maybe? Also, bring a couple of q-tips.” 

We sat with L– for about twenty minutes prodding at his nose with q-tips, tweezers, and trepidation. All we succeeded in doing was make his nose bleed and his mood worse. He was breathing fine, but I took him to urgent care anyway. They had a small scope they tried but couldn’t see anything besides the swelling from our efforts. After looking for a bit, they concluded that he probably swallowed it and gave us a referral for ENT. 

We had to wait two days for an appointment. I understand that it’s not an emergency, but that’s a long time for a seven year old to be anxious. He was so worried that he would choke in his sleep that we had to let him sleep in our room. 

The day of the appointment comes and we’re at the ENT office. Thankfully everyone was quite calm because my son looked like he was going to his execution. I thought they would do an x-ray or something, but nope; another (larger) scope. It took four people, including me, to hold him down so the doc could shove what looked like a plumber’s snake up his nostril. No sign of the green invader, apparently he swallowed it.

To this day, the only M&M’s he will eat are the mini ones. Lesson learned: just because your body has a hole, you don’t have to stash candy in it.