The Mysterious Booger

While we were out for drinks this evening, my friend Timberly brought up a story about a midget she's been telling since high school. Seeing as I was actually there for this traumatic experience of hers, and that I've carried a bit of uncertainty about its authenticity since it happened, I thought it was time we cleared the air about the whole damn thing.

See, Timberly's always been one to tell tall tales. Ever since she was little, you could never tell whether or not the words coming out of her mouth were a story she'd spun together, or if it really happened.

Take for example the time she had the entire neighborhood convinced her mother, Irene, was an abusive alcoholic in need of an intervention. When Irene got home from work on that fabled day, over three dozen of her closest friends and neighbors were gathered in her living room, waiting to tell her how much they loved her, and how they'd be willing to do anything to rid the demons inside of her.

They even used soft voices when they spoke.

I saw the terror and confusion in her poor mother's eyes that day - would she tell them all the intervention was just a clever ruse, perpetrated by her daughter, or would she just play along and pretend to kick the habit? Rather than bring further embarrassment to the family, she ultimately decided to play along.

Irene quit the cough syrup.

This was just one of Timberly's elaborate stories growing up. A lot of the time they were entertaining, sometimes they were life-threatening - but mostly, you were just left uncertain whether or not what she had just tried to convince you of was truth, or fiction.

One day she jumped out of her car after having just gone out for cigarettes, a crazed look in her eyes - I knew one of her famous stories was coming. Out of breath and panicked, she started yelling about some deranged midget who had just chased her out of a gas station.

She began to act out the scene for us in every detail.

She ran in place on the lawn, showing us how she went from a normal walking pace to a full on sprint when this supposed midget began to run after her. Then she hunched over and ran full speed with her arms waving over her head, pretending to be the actual midget who chased her. She even pulled out her keys and reenacted her terror when just as she got to her car she dropped them.

Timberly went as far as to to smear water all over her face to realistically depict the snot running down from the nose of her midget assailant.

She had everyone convinced.

"Oh my god, I'm so glad you're okay!" one blonde friend naively shouted.
"Dude, let's go kick that midgets ass," demanded one of the jock asshole that hung out with us.

I just shook my head and looked into her eyes.

"You don't believe me," she said, shocked.
"Well, I can prove it!" she continued.

She grabbed my arm and pulled me to the driver's side window and pointed at a booger, planted square in the middle of it.

"See?" she asked.
"It's a booger," I replied.
"The midgets booger from when he pounded on my window," she confirmed.

I had to admit, the presence of the booger was indeed fascinating. It was light green and disheveled, consistent with what a truly random booger would look like. Were it darker green and rolled into a ball of some sort, it'd be obvious it was a plant.

This booger was authentic.

I wasn't completely sold, but as usual, I gave Timberly the benefit of the doubt. A retarded midget with boogers running down its face had chased her out of the gas station that day, and so the story was etched firmly in our history together.

Every once in a while, whenever we'd be driving somewhere near to the gas station of this supposed incident, she'd look into the distance and shout, "Holy shit, I think it's the midget!"

As we'd come closer to the phantom midget, it usually turned out to be a mailbox. If we were lucky, it was a little kid.

Once, it was a squirrel.

At the end of the day, after all these years and all of Timberly's stories, this one about the midget has always bothered me.

Did she discover the booger on her window and craft the tale around it, or did she first create the story then plant the booger herself?

We'll never know.