Leonard walked into the emergency Room holding his nose. He went over to the triage nurse to sign in. The nurse looked at his nose for signs of bleeding or swelling. Not seeing any she asked him what the problem was.

“I can’t let go of my nose”, Leonard told her.

“I see. How did you hurt it?’, she asked to try to find out what the problem was.

“I didn’t hurt it. I was using some super glue and I had to sneeze. I didn’t want to sneeze on what I was gluing so I pinched my nose shut”.

“And?”, the nurse asked.

“And what do you think? I had glue on my fingers and now I can’t let go of my nose. That’s why I’m here!”, Leonard told her.

“Hmm. I don’t see what the medical problem is. Let me check with the doctors”.

She was right back and told him to go in. The doctors didn’t really think it was a medical problem either. They just wanted to see this. Now that he was back there they had to try to do something. They tried some solvent which caused Leonard to jerk his head and cry. They tried freezing the spot to see if it would peel off. It didn’t budge.

“I see we have a little bit of frostbite here. That is a medical problem. Now you’re insurance will pay for this. You do have insurance, don’t you? Good. I don’t know how to explain frostbite this time of year but we’ll give it a shot”, the doctor told Leonard.

Every doctor in the hospital came down to look at Leonard and offer suggestions. One of the plastic surgeons suggested slicing it off and doing a skin transplant.

“What we’d do is take skin from your butt and graft it onto your fingers. It works really well”.

“Then my butt would hurt, right?”, Leonard asked.

“Yes, it would. But, you wouldn’t be holding onto your butt. That would look even dumber than this does”.

By then Leonard’s mother had gotten to the hospital. Told she’d have to wait she charged back into the ER hollering for “her boy, Lenny”. Leonard was 46 years old. He cringed at hearing his mother yelling. The doctors told her what happened and what they were trying to do and what the options were.

Leonard’s mom had her own option. She reached down and ripped the fingers loose from Leonard’s nose. Some super glue that was.

Leonard said to the doctors, after the screaming stopped, “Well, you better get that surgeon back down here”.

His mom said, “What? No thanks for me?”