Man-Rule: Never Pick Your Nose While Driving Your Car

There’s an old saying: “A man’s home is his castle, and a man’s car is like a smaller version of his castle, except it moves and there are windows all around it so everybody can see what the man is doing inside his smaller moving castle.”

Truer words were never spoken. People have a tendency to consider their cars a private area, especially when they have the windows rolled up; they feel cocooned in an enclosed space, and they’re thinking their own thoughts, listening to some music or moron callers on sports-talk radio shows, and they forget that everybody else around them can see what they’re doing inside the car.

Sometimes this makes for amusing little vignettes that brighten your day, like when you see a woman attempting to put on makeup while she’s driving and she accidentally swipes her lipstick across the entire lower left quadrant of her face, or when the long-haired teenage guy in the old Saab ahead of you cranks up the volume on his favorite CD and provides an amazing head-slamming performance of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” complete with an air-guitar solo wrenched from the very depths of his soul.

A real Man should never forget that he’s on display when he’s in his car, and by far one of the worst transgressions you can make in this scenario is picking your nose. I’m not talking about a quick swipe of the nostrils to relieve an itch, or a firm rub to remove any traces of the cocaine you snorted just before getting behind the wheel. No, I’m talking about actively digging around in there, burying your finger up to the third knuckle in your nose and rooting around like a blind hog searching for acorns as you attempt to dislodge that one pesky booger that’s been bothering you for an hour.

Frankly, picking your nose in general isn’t particularly Manly. When’s the last time you saw James Bond picking his nose? But at least in normal life, you can hide your nose-picking activities by going to the bathroom, or pretending to read a large book (such as the Oxford English Dictionary) by propping it up on a table and slouching behind it, or if you’re a surgeon, pretending to drop your scalpel on the floor just as you’re about to make the first incision. (Surgeons have to be quick about it, though, because they’re wearing a mask, which most of us don’t have to deal with on a regular basis when we pick our noses. Also, they have to remember to pick their nose with the hand that’s not holding the scalpel. Surgeons have to remember DOZENS of little details like this all the time [another example is “Don’t drop the keys to your Maserati in Ms. Gleenbaum’s abdominal cavity”], and that’s why they go to school for upwards of 15 years.) When you’re in your car, you’re not hidden. It may FEEL like you’re all by your lonesome out there in your little moving castle, but you’re not. Remember that everyone else can see you as you’re tooling along the highway.

So if you absolutely HAVE to pick your nose while driving in your car, bring along the Oxford English Dictionary, prop it on the steering wheel, and slouch behind it. Just pray that Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” doesn’t come on the radio while you’re doing it, because beginning your heart-wrenching air-guitar solo while your finger is buried in your nose can have some painful consequences.

(c) 2012 John Puckett