Image by Matthias Wewering from Pixabay
Many Aussie adults have had a close encounter or two with a piece of Lego. Like when you’re walking barefoot on the carpet and you stand on the hard-edged piece little Johnny left there.
Or the piece that little Mary lost in the custard bowl or stuck in the car’s air vent.
For as long as there has been Lego in the world, there have been kids losing pieces of the toy in the strangest of places.
Take the case of Sameer Anwar, a lively seven-year-old from Duneden in New Zealand. Two years ago he lost a piece of Lego and despite strenuous efforts nobody in the family could find it.
The piece has just resurfaced – looking a little gross, but undamaged and ready to be played with again. It had been stuck up his nose all that time!
Seven-year-old Sameer and his parents were amazed when he bent down to sniff the icing on some cupcakes and then began to complain about a sore nose.
Believing he may have sniffed some cake crumbs into his nostrils, his mum encouraged him to blow his nose. And out popped the plastic piece, which Sameer identified as the missing arm of one of his Lego figurines.
“We were all shocked,” dad Mudassir Anwar told the Guardian Australia newspaper. “His eyes were wide open.”
Sameer was crying and distressed when the piece popped out. But it was decided there was no need to take him to the doctor.
At the time the piece went missing, Sameer told his parent he had stuck it up his nose. They could see nothing, and a visit to the local doctor for a more formal examination also failed to find the missing part.
Believing it may have passed into his stomach and been excreted – or that it was never in his nose in the first place and it was merely a little’s boy’s vivid imagination at work – the Anwars forgot about the episode and the piece remained lost.
Mudassir, who is a pharmacy lecturer at a local university, said the strange tale could have had a worse ending.
The piece could have blocked the child’s nose completely, causing an infection. Or it could have moved from his nose into his throat and choked him, he warned.