Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 22, 1990                   TAG: 9006220123
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MINING HIS PEAS CUES DIFFICULTIES

"Except my finger. It can't get stuck up there," he says.

Before he learned that lesson on Wednesday, Chris was your basic sweaty 4 3/4-year-old. A topographical map of scratches and bumps covers his knees. He likes to play with Transformers. For lunch he eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Cheez Doodles and Fruit Wrinkles.

Not too long ago, at the Child Development Center at the First Baptist Church in Roanoke, Chris and his chums were playing with a big bowl of black-eyed peas. They pushed them around, pretended to cook them and generally had a riotous old time.

Well, on Wednesday, Chris and the rest of the preschool class were dispatched to their daily afternoon nap. Chris lay on his cot, not quite prepared to snooze, when - lo and behold - he spied a stray and leftover black-eyed pea.

He did what your basic sweaty 4 3/4-year-old with nostrils does with a stray pea.

He pushed it up his nose.

"It was a bean. They call them black-eyed peas, but they're really beans," he said.

While the other young lads and lassies slept, Chris fished out the pea.

He pushed it up a second time.

Chris, why would you do that?

"Because I was sure I could get it out," he said, nearly indignant at the very thought of such a stupid question. "I got the first one out. I put it up with my finger and I got it out with my finger."

But the second pea/bean proved too much, even for the short and probing fingers of a 4 3/4-year-old.

Chris cried. He breathed through his nose. His teachers couldn't get the pea out.

They called his parents, and his dad, Bo, drove into downtown Roanoke from his job at ITT in Roanoke County.

Bo drove Chris to the pediatrician near Tanglewood, but the good doctor, too, met his match with the pea/bean wedged in the young man's nostril. He sent father and son to a specialist at Gill Memorial Ear, Nose and Throat Clinic back in Roanoke.

"He had this thing that went like this," Chris said, holding up a bent finger. "It gets beans and ordinary vegetables out of people's noses. And watermelon seeds."

The crooked tool liberated Chris from 3 1/2 hours of nasal distress and rescued the black-eyed pea from the deepest, darkest recesses of a 4 3/4-year-old nostril.

What did you do then, Chris?

"I went to see Mom, to tell her the bean was out,"

Mom, a.k.a. Christy Lucas, was at work. A world of worry was lifted from her shoulders when that pea - bean, according to the victim - once again saw the light of day.

Then he went swimming at LancerLot. Then he ate at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Then he went to bed.

On Thursday, Chris called a press conference - just kidding - to get his message out to all sweaty 4 3/4-year-olds: "I won't put anything else up my nose. You might have to put a lawnmower up there."

Hey, the kid's 4 3/4 years old. He gets silly sometimes.

But no more up the nose. The ears? That's another story.