My 2-year-old spent yesterday morning tearing around the house with his friend Theo, and I swear I had to intervene every five seconds not only to remind my kid that there is No Jumping On the Couch For the Love of God Don't Make Me Say It Again but also to wipe his nose. I must have wiped his nose 5825140342 times during a 2-hour playdate, and that's not counting the number of times he managed to surreptitiously wipe his own face across a couch pillow/the carpet/the dog/etc.

It seems like all the running around must activate some sort of snot gland, because I've observed this before when he's playing with other kids. I think of it as Playground Nose, where every kid you see has a glistening sheen above their upper lip. Do little kids not know how to sniff yet? Or what?

The embarrassing part is not only can the presence of a large amount of snot transform your child from something innocent and cute to, frankly, a stomach-turning apparition of horror, but now they look like they have a COLD. And the parent of the visiting kid is probably thinking, oh great, thanks so much for exposing your repulsive mucus-machine to my family, I can't wait to be up at 4 AM dosing my feverish child with Tylenol.

(Unless their own kid has an excitement-triggered snot-lather on their face, in which case everyone can relax. In between frantic tissue swabbings, of course.)

Man, being a parent is just so . . . GOOEY, sometimes. I knew there would be bodily substances, I just didn't know there would be so many of them, in such vast quantities, and smeared on so many surfaces of my house.