“Did you see that? That girl picked her nose! Girls don’t pick their noses! They are not like boys! Girls are on a pedestal. They are adored. They are yearned for. They are loved. They are beautiful. Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice. They are not like boys. They are not snails, nails and puppy dog tails. Girls don’t spit in the dirt. Girls don’t scratch. Girls don’t pick their noses…do they?”
Girls Don’t Pick Their Noses – Do They?
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Benjamin_Cox]Benjamin Cox
At the time I thought Phyllis Ray would one day become a concert pianist. She entered a talent contest on TV when she was fifteen years old and won first prize.
I can still see her up on the stage, sitting behind that big old black piano. The auditorium was packed, the cameras were rolling, when she started to bang on the keyboard, pound on those ivories, then got down on the high end and started manipulating the keys with the fingers of one hand inside the fingers of the other. She was that good.
But I didn’t come here to tell you about all that, Madam (Mr.) toastmaster, fellow toastmasters, and welcome guests. I came here to tell you about an incident that occurred (one day) two years earlier in Mrs. Belt’s seventh grade class!
I can’t believe Phyllis would do that. I can’t believe anyone would do that, especially a girl. It was awful! It was gross! It was shocking to say the least!
Still, I can’t deny she was a pretty girl, because she was. I thought her head was a little big at the time, perched up on her long slender neck, but in retrospect, I don’t think it was that large at all, it was just that she was such a small girl.
She had slim features, long slender fingers…why, she couldn’t have weighted more than fifty pounds. Her face was smooth, her nose was slightly pointed, her eyes were green and her dark brown hair was done up in a pixie hairdo. She was beautiful.
She was a straight A student too! She sat right up front of the class… right by the teacher’s desk. I sat in the row behind her and one seat over to the right. There I could see everything she did.
Sonny James was big back in those days and his new song, Young Love, was at the top of the country music charts. There were other songs there as well, songs by Marty Robbins, Faren Young, and others. And Phyllis would sit there at her desk and write those names down, the names of the artists and the names of the songs. She would do that in the margins of her scratch paper: up and down the sides, across the top and bottom, at an angle across the page, upside down, using a variety of fonts with smooth curves.
But, Phyllis’ mind was never that far away from what the teacher was saying, what the teacher was doing. There were times that Phyllis would stare at the teacher and blackboard for ten minutes or more, absorbing everything that was said, everything that was done.
On that particular day, Phyllis was wearing a white sleeveless blouse and a pair of jeans that extended down past the middle of her calves. She wore a pair of slippers. I remember the shoes because she kept prying one of them off with the other, back and forth, one at a time, while she continued to doodle on her paper.
On that particular day she had just taken her mind off the blackboard, a portion of her attention was diverted back to the scratch paper on her desk. Then without taking her eye off the paper on her desk – inadvertently or subconsciously – she took her right hand, the thumb of her right hand, and plucked a big old bugger out of her nose and rolled it around between her thumb and middle finger then dropped it on the floor.
Startled that she would do that and mesmerized by the moment, I followed that small round ball of mucus and dirt as it plummeted toward the floor then continued to watch as it bounded around down there for a couple of seconds. Then slowly, ever so slowly, I raised my eye and glanced back to where Phyllis was seated, not believing what she had just done.
A second later, goggled eyed, I shouted, pointing to others in the room and indicating the area where Phyllis sat.
“Did you see that? That girl picked her nose! Girls don’t pick their noses! They are not like boys! Girls are on a pedestal. They are adored. They are yearned for. They are loved. They are beautiful. Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice. They are not like boys. They are not snails, nails and puppy dog tails. Girls don’t spit in the dirt. Girls don’t scratch. Girls don’t pick their noses…do they?”
Benjamin J Cox is an author, novelist, poet, speaker, writer and humorist. He has written two books, Insider Dreams, a 911 Novel and To Mama: The Long Road Home. He was born on a dirt street in a Waldron, Arkansas, in 1943. He graduated from the University of Tulsa with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He is married with three children, five grandchildren. He is the President of Mayes County Writers Club, the Treasurer of Pryor Creek Investment Club and a Area Governor and VP-Education as amember of Will Rogers Toastmasters International. He is retired and lives with his wife in Pryor, Oklahoma. He like to run, play poker, enjoys big band dancing, Speaking before groups, and writes every day.
Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Girls-Dont-Pick-Their-Noses—Do-They?&id=1042082] Girls Don’t Pick Their Noses – Do They?
