booger flips and snot

The rich and the poor have this in common: The LORD made them both.–Proverbs 22:2, New Living Translation

The hospital where I worked (in Nepal) has big, deep trash cans to collect the obvious–trash–and the booger and snot deposits of employees and visitors. In Nepal it is not bad manners to insert your finger or fingers up your nostrils, dig out those annoying boogers and flip them in the direction of your choice regardless of the obstacles in your way. It is not bad manners to blow snot out of your nose or regurgitate the same in a fury. The trash cans keep people from slipping and sliding on snot deposits.

On campus, besides Nepalis, we also have several families from countries the world labels as “civilized.” It is the general assumption that they do not need the trash cans and that they have access to more appropriate, civilized methods of depositing boogers and snot. But that is not necessarily true: I was cutting a corner in a hurry one day and ran into the top “civilized” physician ripping a doozy of a snot spray over red spring poppies! As I jumped back to save myself from stray droplets, he realized he was caught wet-handed. Quickly he pulled himself together with great dignity and began an exaggerated pretense of have an itch on his nose.

First World or Third World; politically correct developed country or developing country; affluence or poverty; cultured with class from the most upscale part of the city or farmers from a boonie town across the mountain–we’re all the same in a basic sort of way.