Not really current...
 

...but I found it interesting :P

Every so often whilst trawling through old newspaper collections (online mainly, God bless teh interwebsnet) I come across a news story which, though of absolutely no use to my research, interests me enough to keep reading. This story could have jumped right out of any tabloid newspaper today... :)

From The Times, Tuesday, Jul 03, 1804:

I did that with a little white pebble I found in my driveway. Scared the crap out of me but I managed to blow it out before I had to tell anyone about it. Spencer did it with half a pistachio shell and spent a while in the ER before it was finally dragged out with an angioplasty balloon.

omg can you imagine a bean growing in your head? Would it, eventually, sprout? :eek:

Heh, we see it all the time. Corn, stones, beans, toys, etc. in ears and noses.

What I find most interesting is the article's reference to the child as "it."

I did that with a popcorn kernel once. I think I was 2. I remember my dad somehow getting it out and he seemed really freaked out. He had to stick my head between two couch cushions to get me to hold my head still.

Yes, that struck me too. It's one of the reasons I found the article so interesting. The idea of children as something special in their own right as children, rather than as miniature adults in waiting (or wilful beasts to be broken properly) was relatively new at the time. Certainly only a couple of generations old. Though by this time childhood was starting to be seen as special and children beginning to take on a meaning we'd more readily recognise now, you can still see the vestiges of earlier sensibilities in their language use.