The Nose Horn

As a child, I remember laughing at my grandfather because I thought it was so funny that he blew his nose so loud.  I remember almost jumping out of my chair and getting the little thrill chills. My grandmother would get so mad at him and say to him “That’s Just Nasty.”   He and I would look at each other and laugh.

Last night, I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with an old friend.  Several glasses of wine and no dinner later, we were catching up on all of our life events.  As girls, we need to catch up on every purchase and cute little things our child did in the last quarter. All of a sudden, I heard this loud noise in the background.  She sighed really loudly and then I heard it again.  I started to laugh, I felt like that seven year old kid again laughing at my grandfather.  She turns her head away from the phone

“Jason, stop it.  You are the grossest man I know.”

Then the loud noise once again journeyed through the air waves.   And just when you thought, the traumatic look at me event was over, the nose horn started as he proceeded to blow his nose.  The phone grew silent and my friend hung up without saying good bye.

At what age do we decide that sneezing so loud that you might wake up the dead is acceptable?  Or that blowing your nose should be the household alarm clock?  Everyone needs to blow their nose at sometime in their lives, but does it have to be something that every man, women, child, domestic pet and wild life needs to experience with you? 

My answer is NO.  I don’t know if there is any etiquette to how you blow your nose or the volume in which you should advertise this event but I would think that self respect would dictate that you try to keep the sound to a minimum.  And I will not address the germy issue associate with the event.

At some point in our lives we are going to have to blow our nose louder than others depending on your level of congestion.  You can not entirely escape the process of removing through clogging elements in your nostrils but one would argue that you could do it a bit more quietly.  You don’t have to alarm the public, scare small children or traumize the elderly.  We have our economy and silly politicians that need a job.  My thought on blowing my nose is that discretion is the key.  I don’t want to be so loud that people may think that I could be butt of a good nose horn joke or a blog post. 

So to my good friend, all husbands have annoying habits.  Your embarrassment is our embarrassment so you don’t have to hang up the phone next time.  One of the things that you might consider is printing out the article that I located on Ehow Health.  They were generous enough to give us some nose blowing techniques as well as tell us how to properly blow our noses.  There was not one of how to reduce the volume of noise blowing event (Nose Horn) but there was one helpful tip that I thought your hubby might benefit from in the short time while we locate solutions to the other problem. 

1. Find a private area. Avoid blowing your nose in front of other people, or at the dinner table. Blowing your nose is associated with germs and people may find it distasteful to witness the act. They may move away from you and avoid coming near you afterward.

Read more: How to Do Proper Nose Blowing | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_8369649_do-proper-nose-blowing.html#ixzz1srWhs3de