Go Ask Dad: When a nose bleed is more than a nose bleed

My son collided with a classmate by accident during recess and received a bloody nose. Dr. Google informs me that your sniffer is a “very vascular part of the body” with an abundance of tiny blood vessels called arterioles. My own extensive medical research demonstrates that these arterioles are sensitive to contact with fast-flying objects.

Once in baseball practice, a friend caught a bad-hop groundball with his nose. During a basketball game, a teammate caught an elbow right in the schnoz. In both instances, the child’s hands reflexively went to the nose, only to pull away in surprise and horror at the mess of bright blood on their fingers.

But the nose bleed that I wish to tell you about today, gentle reader, occurred in the high school cafeteria. This was during a period in my life when I was hanging out with a bunch of guys who were generally crass and careless, seemingly hellbent on trying to out-stupid one another. We were too cool (read: immature) to act like we cared about much of anything, especially the weak and vulnerable.

One of the toughest guys sneezed one day. It was winter, and I guess his arterioles were especially dry and sensitive. His nose became a faucet, pouring red blood. The smallest guy at our table, who we often picked on, jumped to his feet and hustled to the lunch line, returning with a fistful of napkins. The nose-bleeder applied pressure to his snout. He was fine, of course, and the day rolled on.

But thirty years later, I remember that smaller kid. His swift response. His genuine look of concern. The tough guy’s gratitude. And the balled-up napkins in a red lump on the cafeteria table. Such a thing is not worth remembering, except that tiny things are not always tiny, are they? As surely as there is blood that beats through all of us.