FROM GRAMPS

FROM GRAMPS
I may have created the wrong impression in my first attempt at writing a blog. It is only appropriate that the patriarch of the family should set a high tone and write on matters of serious mien and of weighty substance. It is thus motivated that I approach such a subject, the nose bidet. A bidet (noun of French origin, pronounced “bee-day”) is an appliance usually purchased by women with ample bathroom and budget space to allow for more than one flushable implement per room. It is used to cleanse their nether regions, which function is, by lesser mortals, accomplished by use of toilet paper, the implement provided by nature and the genius of man through the growth and harvesting of trees. The nose bidet performs a similar function, for either sex, on, appropriately, the nose.

We learned of this marvelous new device from Doctor Oz on the Oprah Winfrey show recently. Oprah, with more money than anyone except Bill Gates, can, on her show, talk about anything she wants to. Lately, with the help of the genius Doctor Oz, she has chosen to talk about things related to the discharges from human body orifices. One show dealt with gas from you-know-where. I warned you that this discussion would be about weighty matters. Some weighty matters are lighter than air, but have a less delicate impact on the nose. To be fair, Oprah uses many of her shows and a lot of her money to help people, often in desperate circumstances, all around the world. However, speaking of impacts on the nose, back to the nose bidet.

People with serious sinus problems are among those who will consider my subject for today one of real value. Since the Oprah show on which Dr. Oz demonstrated the product, drug stores have sold out of it. In appearance, it looks like the oil lamps pictured biblically, with a spout at one end, a handle at the other and an opening at the top for filling – with warm water, in the case of the nose bidet. Here’s how it works. One tilts the head and pours water through the spout into one nostril. After about a three second wait, while the liquid circulates through the nostril and the sinuses, it comes out the other nostril. Hopefully, one will have anticipated the need to be leaning over a sink or basin which will capture the runoff – or (picture this), kneeling over a regular bidet and enjoying, simultaneously, a nose-sinus-eye wash! Ah, the poetry of it. The original and the imitator playing a symphony in ablutions! Umm, have we yet reached the limits of out-of-control imagination?

Nevertheless, in privileged or more humble environs, using the nose bidet, the sinuses are washed clean, accomplishing the same function internally as the original bidet normally does elsewhere externally. Bottom line – no, that’s not quite appropriate – top line, the nose bidet accomplishes what toilet paper can’t do. If one tried to use TP for the sinus job, it would necessitate twisting it into a kind of rope, threading it into one nostril, pushing on it until it wound its way through the sinuses and back out the other nostril. It could never negotiate the route. Even if it could, it would probably feel like barbed wire nasal floss. Anyway, nose bidet converts testify that their sinuses have never felt more pampered and less irritable in all their lives.

Since the stores have been cleaned out of nose bidets, I thought of another implement, the ear syringe, to accomplish the same purpose. Instead of using it for suction, as in cleaning out babies’ ears and noses, it could be filled with warm water which would then be poured or squeezed into the nose, as with the nose bidet. I suspect that they didn’t suggest that alternative for fear that someone like me would squeeze too hard and blow out my brains. No great risk there. If there were anything in there of real value, this blog space would be used for such subjects as black holes, quarks and quantum physics.

As proof thereof, I offer the instance of my actual use of the ear syringe that we bought for some purpose recently – probably to blow clipped whiskers out of my triple rotary head shaver. I use it to clean out my ears, but not with suction. As I would with the nose bidet, I fill it with water, tilt my head and pour or squeeze water into one ear. The water passes, unobstructed, through the intervening space and out the other ear. I wonder that my hearing aids aren’t more effective than they are, considering the large echo chamber available.

There now, don’t you feel that your brain has been fed and your psyche elevated by the maturity and sophistication of my subject for today?