Snot. After screaming myself hoarse at hoards of drunken horror night patrons and pushing my body to the limits by getting very little sleep, I managed to pick up some mild germ. I feel OK, I don't think I have a fever, however my entire head has been turned into a snot machine. I am the snot lord. Snottus maximus. The lord of the snots.
Last night I gave up on any dainty little Kleenexes. They simply cannot handle my snot. I groaned and rolled over on my couch and plucked out a t-shirt from the growing pile of laundry in my living room I have been too lazy to wash. That became my snot-rag for the night. I dragged it around the house after me like Linus and his blanket. Every now and then it would arise to my nose to have another noisy wet package delivered.
When I was in the third or fourth grade I was snotting up over something. Either a cold or allergies. Anyways every time I blew my nose some kid in the class would loudly shriek 'EEEEW'!. Finally, annoyed, I took a clean Kleenex and pretended it was full of snot and went over and wiped it on him. "Enjoy!' I chuckled lewdly to myself.
Much to my horror the kid went bugshit. You would have thought I was wiping anthrax on him. He started screaming and jerking about. The teacher looked up alarmed and ran over to see what was the matter. Eventually she got the info out of him about my dirty little deed. For some reason this really annoyed her. She grabbed my by the wrist and marched me to the principals office. Apparently the principal was out, so she made me call my mother to tell her what I had done. For some reason when the phone hit my ear, I broke out in tears. I had never had to call my mother about anything. So they rang up her work and I sobbingly told her what I had done.
Decades later I found out my mom was covering her mouth and laughing during the entire call. Thinking back, I wonder what the teacher would have thought of that.
So don't mess with my snot and me.
2026 Update
Setting the dial for October 2006, where Ed Heffernan has crowned himself Snottus Maximus and befriended a laundry pile.
Ah, 2006: a simpler kingdom of snot, unwashed t-shirts, and phones you could call at a mother’s actual job. Back then, if the principal was out, a teacher could march you to the office and make you sob into a landline while your mom’s coworkers pretended not to hear. In 2026 that entire scene has been replaced by a school portal notification and a behavior-tracking app. The child would never have to speak aloud; his humiliation would simply be logged, timestamped, and linked to a PDF handout about hygiene. The current snot-lord infrastructure is also different. Kleenex has surrendered to subscription tissue boxes and memeable mucus content, and any t-shirt accidentally drafted as a snot-rag would probably be promoted to a limited-edition drop. We also don’t call people at work anymore. Calling is rude; surveillance is polite. His mother would likely have received a text with a crying emoji, not a live sob performance. The teacher may have been "really annoyed," but the real system was so analog it was almost charming: actual tears into an actual receiver, with a laughing mother hiding behind her hand. We’ve paved that farm over with notifications, and honestly? It’s worse.
“2006 Ed, after making that kid go bugshit, did you learn anything about consequences, or was your true lesson that snot could be used as a weapon and a therapeutic excuse to call your giggling mother?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I'd like to tell you I learned some grand moral about consequences, but the honest answer is I mostly learned that a well-timed fake snot wipe can clear a classroom faster than a fire drill, and that my mother's laugh is the best thing to hear when you're nine years old and terrified. The teacher thought she was teaching me a lesson, but really she just gave me the greatest excuse ever to call Mom at work. I did get marched to the principal's office, and I did cry, but I also figured out that the terror was mostly in my head. So yeah, I guess the real lesson was that consequences sting, but they're not anthrax. Also that Kleenex can be a weapon of mass disruption. I'm still sort of proud of that. Snottus maximus, lord of the snots, and apparently also a minor psychological warfare expert.
