My parents took us on a lot of long car rides when I was kid, presumably as punishment (for both them and us). I remember how incredibly boring these trips were – I couldn’t read without getting sick, and my parents would never subject themselves to the kind of music I wanted to listen to, so it was hour after hour of just sitting there watching stuff go by.
On one particularly dull trip, I brought along a little box of green “DynaMints” (these were mint candies, similar to Tic-Tacs). For reasons that escape me now, I began to wonder what would happen if I inserted one of these mints into the nose of my sleeping older brother. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but my scientific curiosity got the better of me, so I gently placed one in his left nostril.
Unfortunately, in his sleep he apparently decided that the little mint was something escaping from his nostril, so with a loud “SNORK” he sniffed it straight up his nose and out of sight.
This, of course, woke him up. With eyes bugging out, he let out a terrified yell over the intense mint flavor now shooting up his nasal cavity. To make matters worse, the green candy coating was leaking out.
He had no idea what was going on. I, on the other hand, knew exactly what was happening, but I was laughing waayyyy too hard to explain it to him (after all, what could be funnier to a kid than seeing his older brother screaming while green goo dripped out his nose?). After the hysterical laughter subsided, I told him what I had done. I don’t remember now, but he probably gave me the pummeling of my life over it (but it was worth it).
Every now and then I remind my brother of the famous DynaMint experiment, and the look in his eyes says he hasn’t really forgiven me for it. Perhaps my strange reaction to mints is some sort of guilty response?