Not All Who Wander Are Lost

My Life In A Dozen Ears

1. When I was little we had to wear pink molded earplugs smeared with vaseline in our ears when we took a bath. Much later it was discovered that getting water in your ears doesn't cause earaches like that.

2. Turns out, we just have small eustacian tubes or something. My brother even had to have his ear reconstructed after it got infected.

3. Remember that song My Mother Said Don't You Put Beans In Your Ears? Trust me, don't.

4. The first time I pierced my left ear it was in Faneuil Hall in Boston on a summer camp field trip. I called my parents from a payphone and waited until I had ten seconds left and then said I'm running out of time so I have to go oh I pierced my ear love you bye. My parents were sure my ear would get infected hiking in Colorado for a month later that summer, but it didn't. Back then, local phone calls cost a dime.

5. I can't remember where and when I got my left ear pierced for the second and third time.

6. The first time I pierced my right ear was on stage at the Colonial Theatre in Boston for my graduation from City Year because it was really boring on stage. I did it with a rolled metal ring which would have looked like a silver joint if it were stretched out. The ring belonged to some girl names Rachel who I was dating but not seriously.

7. Another thing that runs in my father's side of the family is tiny pinholes at the top of the ear, where the ear meets the skull behind the temple. These aren't dimples, but real holes, useless and occasionally leaking something clear and odd. You can stick a stud earring all the way in and gross people out pretending you pierced your skull.

8. I figure I lost about 15% of my hearing being the lightning guy at the Boston Museum of Science for three years. It was worth it.

9. When my daughter was born, I looked to see if she had little tiny holes at the place where the top of her ear meets her skull just behind the temple, like my sister, my brother, and my father before us. She didn't.

10. When the light hits my ears just right the baby likes to pull at the tiny silver dots I wear in the three holes in my left ear.

11. When the baby sleeps we watch TV with the captions turned on. Sometimes the people who write the captions mess up, especially when it's live and they're trying to keep up. Sometimes commercials aren't captioned but run behind the last residual textphrase of the previous program, or are captioned poorly and spew character-heavy gibberish. It's funny but we can't laugh or we'll wake the baby.

12. My right ear is blocked up again, all the way down towards my sinuses. It has been for days. I think it's my my eustacian tubes.