My booger freezing morning

The other morning, I had to get up early to meet someone for a 7:30 am meeting.  Early morning is not my prime time, and certainly not when it is cold and dark outside.  It was an important meeting, so I rallied when I heard the alarm, showered, shaved and got ready for the outdoors.  I knew without checking that it would be cold.  You could hear the wind hallowing, and the night before had been rather brisk.  Actually - the night before was proof that I have lived in Minnesota too long.  I was leaving the gym at about 7 pm talking to a friend, who grew up in New Mexico.  It was grey, overcast, sleeting and according to my car 26 degrees.  We both said as we walked outside, "what a nice evening!"  We were both being serious.

Anyway, when the night before is in the freezing zone, you know it will be worse in the morning.  I walked out to my car, breathed in, and - yep - I had an instant booger freeze.

Now, for those of you who don't or have never lived in a really cold weather environment, let me describe a booger freeze.  In the morning in winter, we all try to do our best with our personal hygiene.  This includes the aforementioned showering and shaving, along with other various body grooming rituals.  While we in the Midwest (AKA the fly-over zone, the sorta square states or (my personal favorite) the fold-over states (named so because we disappear when you fold up a map of the USA)) may lack some sense of style, but that is based on a desire to stay warm.  We know our outfits look ridiculous, but they are warm d@mnit!  We do our best to "clean house" in our nasal passages in the morning, but occasionally, stragglers won't let go.  On those really cold days, boogers will freeze instantly in the nose, creating a solid block of snot in the air intake.  It is quite a shock to the system and can wake you up more than hot cup of coffee.  Frozen booger can hurt quite a bit, and they have brought a tear to my eye, which then starts to freeze.

After years of measurement, I have determined that the precise temperature boogers freeze is 0-degrees Fahrenheit.  This is not dependent on wind chill, as the boogs are protected from sudden gusts.  This temperature finding actually raises an interesting question - what did Fahrenheit base his scale upon and what does 0-degrees represent?

I don't really understand why he came up with the scale he did.  The only number that seems to make sense is 100-degrees, which is what he thought was normal body temperature (close, but not quite).  32-degrees is where water freezes, but why he picked 32 I don't know.  It seems like water freezing is an important reference point, and it makes sense to have an easy to remember point of reference for it - like 0 I would think.  But apparently not. Fahrenheit lived in Northern Europe, and maybe like us Minnesotans, you don't feel really cold at 32 degrees. Maybe to him, the real unpleasantness of the cold didn't occur till your boogers froze up.  Hence, the scale is based on bodily reactions and not the change that occurs in the physical  world - 100 is normal body temp, 0 is a booger freezing day.  And back in his day, he probably did not have easy access to tissue paper, so frozen boogers would have been a major problem.    It is one of those hardships in life you don't read about in the history books.  Such a shame.  It could be fascinating - the impact on our history motivated by a lack of Tissue Paper and Frozen Boogers.  Probably a few minor wars were a result of just this sort of thing.  It is a mystery for the ages.