There's no good way to pick someone else's nose.

This may seem a departure from my usual topics, but I think that somewhere in this sentence lies a basic tenet that should be embraced by someone somewhere. I don't know who. I don't know why. But there seems to be something deeper lying dormant in this somewhat obvious and yet also unintelligible statment.

If you have a small child, then you may have guessed where the thought originated. My son, not yet 19 months, has a head cold that involves gross quantites of...well...snot and boogers. Someone has to get in there and clear the passages, and he doesn't have quite the coordination yet. That leaves me. And, as I pin him to the floor, attempting vainly to simultaneously capture his flailing arms and subdue his writhing head, in order to stick the cottony tip of a Q-tip up there and dislodge a booger that's been making a death-rattle-type noise all morning, it occurs to me that I can't think of a nicer way to do this heinous thing that is obviously causing him no end of grief.

But if I leave the booger, he can't breathe.

Of course, the minute the booger is undone and buried in a pile of tissues, a Niagra of baby snot pours down his little snot path headed directly for his mouth, which can't improve the state of his cold.

This is the definition of a conundrum, I think.

Which leads me back to my initial premise that there is just no good way to pick someone else's nose. Furthermore, there is no good reason to do so, it seems.

How does this apply to the war in Iraq? World hunger? Global warming?

I don't know. But I'm sure it must.