Earlier today I received a google hit from someone looking for information on “ham and cheese nose.” I’m assuming this was a query from one of the half dozen people who read this site, trying to figure out what I mean exactly when I refer to my nose as a big ham and cheese nose. Even with hundreds of millions of people on this earth speaking English, and the consequential infinite number of sentence and phrase possibilities that may be borne out of these hundreds of millions of people engaged in the use of this language, I cannot believe, not even as an example of convergent phraseology, that not only did someone else on this earth find use for the term “ham and cheese nose,” but that such a use would inspire another to type the term into the query box of the Google search engine.

So, whomever you are, friend, foe or neither, not that you’ve explicitly asked, but since I have nothing else to share, I will share with you the history of the term “Ham and Cheese Nose.”

Years ago, when I was a strapping young man of fifteen*, unlike the distinguished and experienced individual that I am today**, I used to enjoy the marijuanas, as those little brown Mexican people like to call it (I'm kidding. Don't stab me). My friends and I would often sneak off of the grounds of our wallless progressive school to partake in the numbing euphoria caused by the green stuff. I have not been a partaker for over a decade, and by the time I entered college had generally lost my taste (mostly, I just hated talking to stoners). But when I was in high school, I was one of those Spicoli-like kids. You remember them. No need to describe myself in those years. The stereotypes fit swimmingly.

On one occasion, after two of my friends and I had finished one of our morning off-property constitutions, we split up to try to sneak back into the school. The administrators had a zone defense where they would try to catch those/us kids. Luckily, our school without walls was also a school without windows, and had many many doors. The scales were tipped in our favor. I made it through, but my friends did not, and while I sat in the back of a classroom imagining that the back of my teacher’s head was a giant twinkee, my friends sat outside the principal’s office, next to the school’s PA system.

Now nobody ever accused these two friends of mine of being the brightest students at this school without walls. In fact, they were both pinched the next year, 21 Jump Street style, selling LSD to a thirty-something “high school student” who probably had a receding hairline and a smoker’s cough. So while these two stewed and giggled, waiting to be reamed out by the principal, various, disjointed, and stoner-genius highdeas swam in their heads. Both, I am sure, were quite hungry, as well as annoyed that I had gotten away while they sat in the principal’s office. One of them, probably the brighter of the two, I cannot remember which, tiptoed over to the PA system, pushed the ANNOUNCE button, and said into the microphone: “WILL ADAM ____’S BIG HAM AND CHEESE NOSE PLEASE REPORT TO THE OFFICE!”

Apparently, he wanted to see both a ham and cheese sandwich, and my ass, delivered to the principal’s office, forthwith. Their plan did not work. Neither my ass or a ham and cheese sandwich were delivered to the principal’s office that day. But, being a school without walls, twelve hundred students stood up from their desks, looked around and tried to identify where the big ham and cheese nose was. Scouts had walked out of their classrooms and into the common areas, where I could be seen, sitting in the back of chemistry, chewing on my tongue, staring into space, and imaging my teacher’s head was a giant twinkee. “There he is!” Applause, jeers, cackling, from twelve hundred teenagers. For probably no more than 30 or 40 seconds of glorious educational disruption, my nose was King.

And no, it did not become a nickname. Not that I would have minded if it had. My nose’s 40 seconds of fame were over. I had completely forgotten about the episode for years. Probably a year or two ago, I was cracking on my nose in a post here, and the ham and cheese nose episode popped into my head, probably in a moment of nostalgia, or while I was making fun of Indians or retards or something. I don’t remember. But for me, it stuck, and I’ve been making ham and cheese nose references here ever since. Nobody makes mention of ham or cheese in relation to my nose in the real world.

They are my gift to you.

*virgin
**old balding virgin