This is the tale of how a simple, green garden pea caused the lives of many people to be changed. The pea had modest beginnings. It grew on a common truck farm in mid-west America. It was picked while still in its pod, but was soon chucked; then bagged; then quick frozen with a thousand, thousand other peas. The bag was then placed into carton with a couple dozen other bags. The carton was stacked onto a pallet. The pallet was loaded into the back of a freezer trailer. A Semi-truck hauled it to the local grocery store, where our pea was placed into a display case and then began to wait and wait.
A pretty young woman with brown hair and eyes as green as the pea, came into the store and purchased the bag of frozen peas. She took the bag home and placed it into her Kenmore freezer where the pea once again had to wait and wait.
After a few months the woman took out the bag of peas. She tore the bag open and…Oh No! She poured the frozen peas into a little pan of scalding hot, boiling water. Our little pea was cooked until it became soft and very tasty.
The woman began to scoop out the peas with a big straining spoon. First she plopped some onto the plate of a pretty girl who only played with them, sealing their doom to the ignominious fate of uneaten food — the disposal. Other peas were given to an adolescent boy who devoured them while making a great noisy lip smacking. Some were placed on the plate of a middle-aged man who smothered them in margarine. Then the woman plopped our special pea down onto the dinner plate of a beautiful young girl. She was so young that she did not even know that Pea was spelled with a “P”.
The girl’s long golden hair swooshed across her dinner plate as she looked up and gave her mother a big smile. Oh how she loved to eat peas! First you get to chase them around your plate and then when you ate them they made a delightful snapping sound in your mouth!.
At first she eagerly dug into the peas, eating many of them in a single swoop of her spoon. Then she began to play, chasing them around her plate before capturing a few on her spoon. Soon she became weary of these games so she decided to see if a pea could fit somewhere else in her head besides her mouth. She picked out our special pea and held it delicately between her finger and thumb.
First her father stopped her from putting the pea into her left ear. Being only four years old, the girl mistakes her father’s intentions and tries to put it into her right ear. She is stopped again, this time by her adolescent brother.
Suddenly a loud gasp is heard followed by a whining cry. “Mommy”, the little girl whispers fearfully. “There is a pea stuck up my nose!” Undaunted by her father and brother’s attempts to keep her from placing a pea inside her head; Blondie successfully inhaled the pea up her nose!
The now sad little girl with a pea up her nose was put into a little blue car, and is driven through the city to the emergency room of a leading community hospital. Her Mommy hoped the doctors would be as good at pea extracting as they were with triple bypass surgery.
The Medical people tried to extract the lodged pea. However, the pea’s eviction had became a political struggle between the rights of little girls to put and keep things up their noses and tyrant adults who would shamelessly deny them those rights.
Now imagine seeing all this through the eyes of a girl not quite five. You’re taken by a mad mommy to a terrible place where you are forced to lie on a really hard bed with a paper blanket on it. Hanging on the walls are posters showing people without any skin, showing what their muscles look like. There’s even a poster of a man with his head sawed in half showing the innards of his head. In the corner is a stainless steel cabinet with glass windows. Behind the windows are tons of shiny needles to stick you with and bundles of Popsicle sticks to shove down your throat.
Next thing she knows, a man all dressed in white wearing purple latex gloves enters the room. In his right hand is a long pair of tweezers that glimmers under the bright examination light. He is coming right at her pretty little face with those monstrous tweezers.
“Please pretty little girl with a pea up your nose” the wicked man says, “let me put these tweezers up your nose, and I’ll yank that pea right out!”
NO WAY!
Victory for kids! After putting up a big fit and shedding many tears the adults give up and the now an even angrier mommy takes her back home. The pea up the nose has proven stronger then the adults. Proving that kids do have the right to stuff things up their noses. Ring the bells! Sound the trumpets! Sing along with Barney! Because today is a liberation day for kids all over the world.
The adults haven’t admitted defeat. That night they conspire to have her father take her to see a specialist. Perhaps even a PEA-di-ah-trician. Now a person might think it funny that a man could specialize in plucking small objects from children’s noses, but in a society where grown men get paid millions to hit a tiny ball with a club and then go on strike for more pay, I guess there would be some people who could make a fair living performing nose pickology.
Next morning her daddy took the girl with a pea in her cute nose back to the hospital. Once again the girl refuses to let anyone come anywhere near her nose. Still thinking she has won, her daddy walks her through a door labeled; ”Pre-Op/Surgery”. The adults are getting tough now.
A nurse tricks her into drinking apple juice laced with a sedative. It tastes icky so she only takes a few small sips. Then they wheel her into surgery, where even though she says; “No, I don’t want to put on that funny mask”, a man wearing a silly blue hat puts it on her anyway. Then he makes her breath horrible smelling air. Soon she is fast asleep.
The nose picking specialist, unopposed by the slumbering girl, approaches her nose with the long slender tweezers. With a quick flick of his wrist he removes the pea and sends it into a nearby stainless steel pan. From there the pea will meet its end down the operating room disposal.
Yet the story is not over. After the hospital visit, her father takes her to MacDonald’s for a plain cheeseburger happy meal. As she happily munches her fries she decides to never put a pea up her nose again. Unfortunately, she will have to suffer year after year as her family retells the story of how one little pea affected the lives of so many people.
The End.