The Headboard
The most shameful part of my childhood involves a piece of bedroom furniture: my headboard. I wish I could say members of my immediate and extended family talked of this home furnishing in hushed and reverent tones, but it was loudly mocked and became a favorite subject at nearly every Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter/4th of July/National Pie Day, etc. from the ages ages of 4 to, well, today.
The scrutiny grew even more intense when I reached my preteens and got closer to my 20s. My beloved aunts (who were all so special and like extra mothers to me) would taunt me, “We can’t wait for Danya to bring a boyfriend around so we can tell him all about her (dramatic pause) headboard!” The ornery twinkle in their eyes let me know they were prepared to warn every suitor of this deep, dark secret that lived on the white-painted particle board behind my bed.
“You wouldn’t,” I seethed. My heart would drop to the pit of my stomach and I would debate between pleading for mercy and making a run for it and starting a new life with a family who didn’t know of my shame.
“We would,” they cackled, knowing I only had about $5 from babysitting and a splatter-painted Huffy mountain bike with which to escape.
“We are going to tell all the boys about your BOOGER BOARD!!!!” And then they would dance around a bubbling cauldron like a band of witches. Or at least that’s what it felt like.
“NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” I would wail.
Please, please, please, don’t let this secret get out. I was afraid boys would never want to make out with me again, and making out was totally awesome. Under no circumstance could this scandal be publicized to boys wishing to woo me. Or anyone in my social circle because it was humiliating. But the booger board was very much a part of me.
There isn’t much to tell in the way of a back story. I was a child. At night when I was trying to lull myself to sleep, I would pick my nose then wipe the contents on the headboard behind me. As a child plagued by upper respiratory infections, my nasal passages were ripe with mucus. “Why not use a tissue?” you ask. The answer is, “I don’t know.” I’m sure there was tissue available to me, I just seemed to enjoy the sensation of running my finger down the pebbled surface of the headboard and then admiring what my body could produce. A colony would form and, while recognizing the disgusting nature of this practice, I would leave the nose goblins in place for days at a time.
My parents were horrified. They prided themselves on a tidy home and I was a decidedly untidy child. Messes didn’t bother me. Sure, I preferred to be in an organized environment, I just was not an inherently organized child. This made my parents crazy. From a different generation, they viewed my disheveled nature as a lack of respect for my belongings. Not true! I had an unhealthy attachment to all sorts of inanimate objects (a story for another day), I just wasn’t adept at putting things back where they belonged. Barbies would stop mid fashion show, my Precious Places ice skating figure laid next to my ribbon dancer and PJ Sparkles. And I felt fine with it! The headboard was no exception.
When company or friends would come over, I would get a gentle reminder from my parents that my headboard was not up to snuff. “Clean all the boogers off that headboard or you will spend all night by yourself in your room!” they hissed.
I wasn’t sure where to start in the cleaning process - my snot seemed to be akin to Gorilla Glue so the removal process was no easy task. I put my 6-year-old thinking cap on and settled on a combination of Windex, paper towels, and a butter knife. I feel like the role of each of these tools is evident, so I will spare you the nitty gritty of “nose treasure” removal. But for future reference, these items were extremely effective in the fight.
How the extended family became aware of my headboard is still unknown. I have settled on my parents using me as an anecdote during parties or my brother narking on me. Either way the secret got out and my aunts and uncles leached on to this story like a pack of fleas to an alley cat. Danya, who by all accounts wanted nothing more than to be fancy and rich and famous (and marry Kirk Cameron), was nothing more than a nose-picking, booger wiping miscreant.
I never brought boyfriends around. Truthfully, most of them were a bigger embarrassment than a booger board. Eventually my extended family met the boy I would marry, despite the risk of him learning of my nose picking and wiping. But not until I was 23 and super cute with big boobs. Boys can overlook a substantial number of flaws with the right highlights and a halter top. That is the best advice I can give to girls today: Lock them in before they find out your dark past with snot rocks. Also, I have a very expensive, sustainably-sourced, mango wood headboard today so I wouldn’t deign to wipe my boogers on it.
