Eye Boogers

I took my six-year-old daughter to an ophthalmologist recently, because we suspected she might need glasses. During his examination, the doctor thought he saw signs of a minor infection of her eyelids. He asked me, "Have you noticed an unusual amount of matter--goop--in her eyes lately when she wakes up in the morning?" I told him I hadn't, but the truth is I'm not very observant at that time of the morning, since she gets up pretty early. He turned to my daughter.

"When you wake up in the morning, do you have lots of matter, you know, stuff, in your eyes?"

She seemed to ponder the question for a few seconds. Then she looked up brightly. "Do you mean eye boogers?" she asked.

He and his assistant laughed. I felt vaguely embarrassed that I hadn't taught her a more genteel way to refer to the substance in question, but I couldn't really remember the subject having ever come up.

They confirmed that eye boogers was what they were talking about, and the conversation proceeded from there.

Here is an illustration from Gray's Anatomy, which I have altered slightly to bring it up to date on the subject of eye boogers: