Nose Masseus (2)
That university turned out to be Orel Roberts’ School of Dentistry and Chiropractory, after the applications to the University of Michigan and Northwestern, two of the foremost in the healing arts left his applications unreturned, neither bothering to pay postage for the small white envelopes bearing the single-sheet form rejection slip. Seven other universities sent this. Bertrand wondered if his entrance essay had been too confident, or if his grade point average of 2.7 was a point of contention for the admittance person. He wondered until the bright yellow packet from Orel Roberts came, and when he tore it open, thumb carefully separating the fused flap from the rest, the first line of the most conspicuous folded-up piece of paper did not say “We’d like to thank you for your interest in our university, however…”
At college Bertrand practiced his skills on his roommate, and on the groups of students who came over to smoke pot out of his roommate’s hookah (wasteful but for the novelty of it). “I’m not saying breaking noses is necessarily necessary – outside of extreme cases,” he said to them one night. “Not that I wouldn’t break any of yours if you were suffering from the sort of discomfort my friend Warwick was.”
He said it with a chuckle, trying to put the boys at ease and the make the girls uneasy. He gave them all sinus realignments, telling them what to notice in their breathing from now on. “In the cold, you’ll have no trouble. Won’t feel like it’s freezing in your nostrils. And I dare any of you to come back and tell me you sneezed, because you won’t be able too, because you’ll be lying.”
They’d all been genuinely impressed.
