Me and My Long, Pointy Nose

Part of me is proud of my long, pointy nose. My nose isn’t too long. But it is pointy. And it looks like the pointy noses of many people in my family … generations of noses … and I think it’s very cool how noses have so many different shapes and sizes and that I can look at old photos from family members from many generations ago and point and say, “hey, that guy has my same nose.”

I dig noses. At least twice in my life, before my prefrontal cortex fully formed and gave me the gift of self-editing, tact, and discretion … I’ve told people, “I like your nose.” Or, “your nose has a really cool shape.”

At the time, it felt like a compliment. I haven’t complimented anyone’s nose in years … but believe me! I’m often thinking it.

There is, hoever, one drawback of a long pointy nose. Well … two drawbacks.

First, it’s difficult to look through a peephole in a hotel door. Luckily, the need to lean in close to a peephole and look at who’s on the other side of a hotel door is a very rare occurrence.

Oh, and if I ever win Powerball and find myself will lots of money, I plan to build a mansion with secret passageways, bookshelves that spin around and put me in other rooms (or into the secret passage ways), and I will have large artwork on the walls that allow me to remove the eyeballs in the painting and look through the eyes of the people in the painting, from behind the painting, with my own eyes. You can bet my long pointy nose will make that (spying through a painting) a little more difficult.

So I guess that makes three challenges. Hotel peepholes and haunted mansion mural spying and …

The big challenge of my long, pointy nose is this:  drinking from something with a lid is awkward and annoying.

For a while now, when I get a Starbucks or a coffee from someplace and they press that plastic lid on, I always pull it off and sip from the edge of the cup. I say it’s because drinking coffee is an experience and drinking coffee, like drinking wine or bourbon, is better when it involves the nostrils and your sense of smell. Coffee experts will say to properly enjoy a good cuppa coffee, you should slurp and make noise. All true.

Also, I do get a little grossed out when a barista or McDonald’s person presses the plastic lid onto my cup with their hand and then I’m supposed to drink from that little hole that their hand just touched. This is true, too, and grosses me out a little.

However, even with my own travel mugs, especially Yeti mugs, my long, pointy nose forces me to take an awkward sip where I lean my head way back in order to “pour” the coffee out of the mug into my mouth. Which means I have to be very careful, too, because I’m tipping the mug at a steep angle and the (often too hot) coffee pours out too fast.

I’ve ruined many shirts with coffee spillage and this maneuver trying to drink from a slide-open sipping slot.

This isn’t a plea for help … but a public service announcement. If you, too, have a long pointy nose and find yourself annoyed drinking a non-straw-drink from a cup with a lid and it feels awkward and unpleasant … fear not. You are not alone.

Take that lid off. Drink with your chin down and head straight. Engage the olfactory experience. Don’t taste the palm of a random person’s hand.

And be proud of your long, nice-looking, pointy nose.