As a kid, I would badger my mom to clean my ears at least 3 times a week. I would run to the pen cup, pull out the skinny little bamboo shovel with fuzzy cotton ball top, and scream out to my mom, “Mama, can you clean my ear???!!!” If my mom wasn’t busy outside harvesting silkworms or chopping the head off a duck, she would usually oblige. So there I would sit, Indian style, with my head kinked 45 degrees to the left or right depending upon which ear canal was being excavated. I’d usually have my hand sticking out like I was expecting someone to give me money. But instead of cold hard cash, my hand acted as a depository for the bounty of ear wax my mom would soon be pulling out of the dark recesses of my canal. It was beyond satisfying to feel the little bamboo spoon probing my ear hole, scratching and scraping the walls and occassionally hearing it encounter a little boulder of hard wax. Crunch! And then, to my delight, my mom would present me with a yellowish-green chunk of gold and let it drop into my hand. After a few minutes, I would have a little stack of wax piled on my palm and a smile on my face running from clean ear to clean ear. Little did I know that this innocent mother/son ear-probing ritual would become a fervent, lifelong obsession…
a bounty of ear pleasure
