My husband and I commute down through Marin and across the Golden Gate Bridge together just about every day. He almost always drives (he has a sensitive stomach, and he doesn't enjoy being a passenger on serpentine 101 early in the morning), affording me about 30-40 minutes of leisure time. When I was pregnant, I used to use this time to flip my jaw wide open and catch a quick nap, and not entirely deliberately -- I'd just zonk out. Now I spend the time scanning the hillsides of the Marin Headlands in hopes of catching a glimpse of a mountain lion, which is something I'm slightly obsessed with. And I also amuse myself by examining all the drivers of the other cars who are picking their noses.
With all the nose pickers there are to laugh at, I'm probably missing several dozen mountain-lion sightings every day. It's totally amazing. They come in all kinds of cars -- Audi drivers are just as likely to be excavating as guys bouncing along in old pickups. I will say that most of them seem to be men, but not all of them. You'd probably assume the nose pickers are solo drivers only, but no.Many, many times I've watched the driver of a car blithely rootingaround in his nose while a passenger sits quietly by, apparentlyunperturbed. The pickers experiment with different fingers; some seem to appreciate the dexterity of an index finger buried a couple of inches deep in a nostril, while others prefer the swiping capabilities of a nimble pinky. Even thumbs can get in on the action. The other day I saw a guy switch from index to pinky as we passed him; he was so engrossed in what he was doing, Brandon was able to catch some of the show in the rear-view after we'd moved into his lane and my guffaws had subsided enough so I could explain myself. "I guess which finger you use depends on how much of a perfectionist you are," Brandon commented, sending me into another fit.
I'm not at all shocked to learn that 85% of adults pick their noses, based on my observations. Google "nose pick drive" and you get 1.2 million hits. I'm not the first blogger to puzzle over the phenomenon, and I even found an advice column entry devoted to compulsive picking. I have to ponder what the link is between driving and picking. I mean, you don't look around when you're standing in line at the grocery store and see people absentmindedly pulling boogers out of their noses. Not in restaurants or at the beach, either. I think it must be the same strange compulsion that causes people to drive with a level of barbarism that they would never dream of using in interpersonal exchanges; there's an illusion of anonymity and privacy. But here is what I want you to know, pickers everywhere: I am watching. And laughing, and pointing. And I am very resentful, because I'm sure you're to blame for the fact that I've lived in Northern California for nine years and have still never seen a damn mountain lion.
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