John Brazell

EERIE EARIE CANAL: Goo is good for you



Posted: Friday, November 14, 2008

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The subject today is a trifle indelicate so we'll treat it as gently as we can. Okay?

You know that yucky brownish-gold stuff that accumulates in your ears and takes on the texture of shoe polish? Leave it in there as it's good for you, or so say the earwax experts who polished off their recent scientific study with, "Heck, if people are close enough to see the goo, they're probably too close anyway." I wish I had known.

For those who can't seem to leave it alone, here's more unsolicited advice.

Should you have a pack of little cotton swabs on a stick that say, "Do not insert these in ear canal", don't. They really mean it, sort of. Those harmless appearing little guys were designed to ... ah ... do what, I haven't a clue. In a recent poll 99 percent of buyers said they used them to clean their ears. The others -- owning up to their anal tendencies -- use them to polish chrome on their cars. I fit squarely into the majority as I never polish chrome. I enter the ample crawl space in my ear, ignoring the growing thatch of hair, with reckless abandon, or did.

Actually I was forced into using Q-Tips. For years my preferred method of dredging the earie canals involved a bobby (hair) pin. Since I don't find them lying around the house anymore I assume they, like hairnets, "rats" and sponge rollers, went out of style. To my knowledge there were no warnings about sticking them in your ears -- same with ice picks and pencils -- and therefore must be safer than cotton balls.

My wake-up call was a couple of months ago when I started going deaf. The other person in my household says it was considerably earlier when she was forced to repeat the same instructions to me four or five times. I say balderdash as on average it was no more than ... ah ... but it was less than that. Without resolving that issue I sauntered off to see doc's assistant for an ear (ears) exam. She took one quick look and yelled at the assistant to the assistant with some degree of excitement, "Come here and take a look at this."

For the next twenty minutes I provided the entertainment and training for all the hired help. Really now, using those little plastic cotton swabs like a jackhammer doesn't get the goo out. I had impacted roughly forty-pounds of it in my ears. That's an exaggeration, of course, but not by much. The assistant's assistant, having thoroughly enjoyed the challenge, finished, wiped her tools and the goo on a small white towel, and proudly displayed it in front of me. I, impulsively, innocently, and without forethought (hope that's clear) said the first thing that came to my mind, "Wow, I can hear!" The second was, "Do you charge by the pound?" And the third - hide the children and read quickly -- "Sort of looks like an infant's diaper." I know -- I'm a barbarian.

Anyway, conventional wisdom says don't put anything smaller than an elbow presumably your own - in your ear. If you can't control yourself, use your "pinkie", but wash-up before you go out shaking hands.

Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night." Charles M. Schulz.



John L. Brazell is a native Texan and resides in the beautiful Hill Country near Austin, Texas. He's a retired corporate executive. John’s love for writing can be traced to high school typing class when he first typed, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party." As the only boy in class he took the instruction literally and fell in love with a forty-pound Royal Typewriter and every girl in the class. 

He is a member of several writing groups and has been published in ezines, newsletters/newspapers, community and corporate publications. His unfinished version of the next "Great American Novel" is entitled, The Unfinished Great American Novel.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Camille Strate
 2 years 341 days ago.
61 fans. Follow Camille Strate on twitter!
You are a funny, funny man. What took you so long (to get here)? Your presence on Searchwarp is greatly appreciated by this aspiring Being. Grazie.
» left by John Brazell 2 years 341 days ago.
29 fans.
Well, Camille, thanks again for your very nice comments.  I suspect you're a funny, funny person yourself.  I do love humor and in the sometimes not so funny world in which we live, it is a wonderful elixir.
 
And thanks for making me feel welcome.
 
John
 
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