The Pinocchio girl

Mira Friedlander
April 6, 2009
Filed under Humor

I always thought of it as a joke when my parents would say, “Mira, When you turn 18 you can get rhinoplasty,” so I never thought much of it. But there are always those jokes that are repeated so many times that eventually it’s not funny anymore, and you start to take it seriously; well this was one of them. I began to realize it was no longer a joke but a huge hint to point me in the right direction.

Growing up most kids get teased about what shoes they are wearing or if they have a lunchbox that was “soooo last year;”for me it was different. I was constantly referred to by the size of my nose. The chants kids use to sing still haunt me in some dreams. I was once told by my doctor that I would “grow into it.” It was a lie; that never happened. My nose seemed to do nothing but grow with me.

It was my main distinctive feature and still is, because it seems that when I walk into a room it is not my body that comes in first, but my nose always peers around the corner so people know that I am coming. You would think a normal family would be supportive and say “No, Honey, your nose really isn’t that big,” but I guess my family isn’t normal because I heard the opposite. Things being yelled around my house were of the sort like “No, Taylor, you can’t break Mira’s nose on purpose for a free nose job!” or “Oh look you can barely see Mira in the picture because her nose takes it all up.”

All this ridicule, about something I clearly couldn’t change on my own, led me to deep thoughts: What would I look like with a new nose? What if I don’t like the new nose? What if I want to go back? Will it hurt? Will I lose a sense of myself? Either go through a radical nose procedure–which could probably be covered by health insurance if I claimed a deviated septum– or just leave my nose alone.

It pains me to think of giving up such a faithful nose, it has always been there for things like breathing and smelling, but then again it can be seen as an evil. A nose that brought me such pain, not physical, but emotional pain through all of my years. I struggle with this, knowing that in about a year I will have the option to possibly shave away part of me and start anew or remain the same and carry all those painful memories as baggage throughout my life.

I could decide to just find a big-nosed people anonymous blog and become an avid blogger to help me cope. Or I may have to give up a most faithful nose as mine has been, but in the end at least it would result in no longer having to hear those painful remarks: “When it rains outside we can just take cover under Mira’s nose.” Or just the simple, “Hey, look at her big nose.” They all hurt equally.