Strange Days: Baby Bong

So I mentioned that Fridays have turned into a bit of spectacle and a recent Friday was no different.

What happened will forever be burned into my mind. Yumiko mailed me at work asking if I'd like to join her for supper at her friends house. I agreed and mosyed over after work. While the girls were preparing supper I entertained the two boys in the house, one seven years old and the other a year and a half.

Satoshi, the littlest one is a real cutie, but he had a cold and was dripping out of everywhere and had to have his nose constantly wiped. Somebody has to explain to me someday, how kids can make that much snot so quickly, it's just not natural.

After supper was prepared we all sat down and chatted and ate and Satoshi was really fidgetty and obviously uncomfortable with his predicament. His mother seeing this then craned over to the boy and layed on him what looked like, from my perspective, a very deep kiss. But upon leaning over for a closer look I discovered that she had formed a seal around his nose and proceeded to take a long pull of snot, enough to make his eyes cross.

And *puht* spit her treasure into a tissue and toss it in the garbage.

"Oh, I'm sorry" she laughs "you're eating."

I don't care if I was gutting a cow, that was probably one of the grossest things I've ever seen.

Not one to dilute my reaction I burst out with an "AWWWW, GROSSS!! What did you do that for!!"

And yumiko and her looked at each other like, "Is he serious?" And they explained to me that it's not like she ate it or anything. She spit it out and it's her own baby so it's ok. Then told me that because I'm a guy and I've never seen it before that I would be surprised like that, but if I were to ask my mom or foreign women, I would find that it's natural for a mom to suck the mucus out of her child's nose using her mouth.

And ask I did. I found that the women teachers in my school (in Japan) thought nothing of it and that Canadian people thought it was disgusting. They explained that because of the spread of germs you should use a little booger sucking turkey baster device for the job. And not your mouth.

I'm not an expert on babies but I don't want whatever it is causing all the snot in the child in the first place so the baby baster thing sounds like the route I'd take. And not sucking it out with my mouth. I think there is some kind of motherly/parental love that I have yet to learn.