< by Jill >

A little known fact about me: I’m always worried there’s something on my nose.

If the crew of Wild America outfitted my bedroom with hidden cameras, they’d be forced to speculate about my persistent nose-touching. I can just imagine Marty Stouffer, narrating in his inquisitive twang: She bends her right index finger and touches the top knuckle to the tip of her nose, feeling for foreign objects. She repeats this motion nearly every five minutes so as not to repeat the past.

The past: I was on the school bus, seated across from the boy I liked. I knew him from art class. He asked me to draw a picture of him. “Only if you draw a picture of me,” I said. He agreed, and we began penciling on looseleaf paper.

When we finished, he said, “On the count of three, flip your paper over.”

Together, we counted one, two, THREE!

In wispy pencil strokes, I found an accurate rendering of my likeness. However, it wasn’t the almond-shaped eyes or toothy smile that lived up to reality. It was the booger. The big, huge booger stuck to my nose.

My insides liquefied, and I clamped my hands over my nose. He threw his head back and erupted in a big belly laugh, lobbing the paper over the seat and into the hands of the older boys. It circulated from row to row, generating fits of laughter from every bench.

And that’s why I’m always worried there’s something on my nose.

This week, each post will feature a hilarious embarrassing story. For fans of YM‘s “Say Anything” section, it will be a walk down memory lane: tales of inopportune toots, unfortunate stains, and slapstick tragedies that make you laugh, even if you won’t admit it.