cosmetic surgery.

On many occasions in my life, children—those supposed fountains of unbridled truthfulness—mostly nieces and nephews, have approached me and asked the following question: “Why is your nose so big?”

Every time this happens, I find myself a little disappointed. Old issues about body image are drudged up from the proverbial basement of my psyche. In that moment, I’ll often grab for my nose, covering it self-consciously with wrapped fingers, wondering if it could only be, as these children indicate, plus size.

With evasive insecurity, I’ll think on how my nose must not really be that large. Certainly, I lack of the type of regal nasal endowment of an Adrian Brody or a Manu Ginobili, because were my nose of such a stature, comments regarding its size would flood from not only children but from adults as well. And adults almost never say anything about it at all. So obviously, my nose is nothing to write home about, no aberration from the boring old norm, barely if at all beyond the crest of the bell curve. But how I wish it was.

You hear about people whose smiles brighten up a whole room, actors whose trademark looks make them instantly recognizable, and captivatingly striking girls whose arrival to the school dance causes the music (which is obviously being projected via an mp3 player plugged into a PA system) to inexplicably halt with the screeching properties of a needle being dragged from a vinyl record. The whole crowd turns to watch her step across the gym’s threshold and into poorly executed decorative themes as logically incongruent as “Prom on the Moon” or “Romance in Bubonic Plague-era Europe.” And that’s the kind of thing I want from my nose. I want to enter a room and see every eye fixated on the protruding center of my face. I want to be repeatedly accosted with horribly unoriginal Pinocchio-related jokes about my having recently fibbed. I want a nose that causes car accidents as oncoming drivers become mesmerized by its sheer volume and forget how to brake.

Unfortunately, the most attention my nose has ever garnered has been, as stated, from little children. And most of them won’t even have their driver’s licenses for years. It has me thinking that if I really want a nose that people will talk about, I may require assistance beyond what was naturally gifted to me. And so I contemplate a nose augmentation.

The notion of cosmetic surgery might seem silly to some. “Clint,” they’ll say, “you already have the biggest nose in the family. There’s no need to make it bigger. You’re perfect the way you are.” And they might be right. I may very well be the possessor of the largest nose of my family or of all my co-workers, and may even be in or above the eighty-fifth percentile for nose size in these United States, but until I can look in the mirror and feel comfortable by having the end of my nose touching the reflective glass while the rest of my face is still a full eight inches away, I don’t think I’ll feel completely okay with myself.

My only hesitation has to do with the type of example that this sets for the next generation. I don’t want kids hinging their worth as humans upon their nose’s capability for water displacement. Because after my surgery is complete, no way will they be able to surpass my record-setting figure of forty-seven milliliters. And I’m not sure what effect that might have on their self-esteem.