THE GAME OF COOTIE

I like board games. Always did. Oh, I'd rather be outside, but when rain or darkness prevented, I'll take a good board game. Monopoly is my all time favorite even though it requires a huge time investment.

But I liked Cootie, too. It's where I first learned the term proboscis. It's kind of a cool word. I assume it's where we get the term nosey for sticking one's proboscis (probing) into someone else's bees wax as we used to say as kids. Well, one neighbor kid said it anyway(s).

Having a small nose, I never knew why some hated having a large schnoz. I remember Jimmy Durante as an old man: he of famous huge honker, but this may be the first picture I've seen of him in his younger years. I assume the girl is wearing a nasal prosthesis making fun of him.

Once in high school, actually she was in high school and I was in junior college, I knew a girl with a very large beak. I know, that's not nice, and I would never have said that around her or to anyone who might have allowed that comment to get back to her. I was kinda sensitive back then. But one night at The Mug,(a drive-in MTV known throughout the state) I was with a bunch of guys who pulled up beside her and some girls. Nice girls, but one of the guys I was with was not.

Without any provocation, without any hint of what he was going to do from the backseat with rolled down windows, Bob the Beast loudly announces, "Nose, Nose, anything goes. Your nose turns into a water hose."

I couldn't have sunk any lower into the shotgun seat where I was riding parked next to the car of girls. "Let's get out of here, " I begged the driver, but Sieg was laughing way too loud, way too long.

Time stopped. I wanted to disappear as in the commercial by Southwest Airlines, "Ever wish you were someplace else?" You bet. And, with a lot of my stories, there's no denouement. That's it: that's all I remember about the incident. Except I still think back about that when someone talks about a big nose. Or someone wanting to get away.