I recently discovered that I have a fascination with ear wax.  My four-year old has had 2 ear infections in his short life so far.  The first one brought us to the doctor where a nurse flushed his ears out.  It was a painful process.  Julian did not like it one little bit.  He is usually not a complainer, but he was crying and trying to wiggle out of our hands.  After she squirted his ears full of water three times, huge gobs of ear wax came out.  The nurse called them “ear potatoes.”  I’d call them ear snot.  They were huge. I was amazed that something like that could even fit in a person’s ear, and there were several pieces besides!  Gnarly is the best word for them. 

Periodically, I use an otoscope that my husband has from his army medic days and take a look in Julian’s ears at the wax gobs building up in there.  Recently Julian started swim lessons and being in the water so regularly has been softening and flushing pieces of ear wax out which feeds my desire. 

I don’t just like looking at ear wax.  If I was a professional who wasn’t afraid of puncturing my son’s ear drum,  I would proceed to eradicate those chunks of wax from his ears.  Not to keep him healthy or to prevent future ear infections. No. Purely for the selfish reason to get a better look. 

I don’t understand this fascination but I’ve come to realize that this is something that I do really get something out of.  I think this is connected with my scab picking manerism. I recently googled ear wax images and just surfed through the myriad pictures that surfaced.  And let me tell you there aren’t nearly enough pictures of ear wax visible on the internet. 

In Shrek when he pulls his ear wax out of his ear and makes it a candle to light his dinner table in the opening sequence…in that moment, I wish it wasn’t a cartoon but live-action, a real person/ogre pulling real ear wax out of his ear.  If I were shrunk in Honey I Shrunk the Kids, I would travel down the ear canal and explore the stalactites and stalagmites of human ear wax.  I would be sad if it were too heavy to push out of the ear, but if I were small enough to fit in an ear, wax would probably be too heavy for me to do much about.  I wonder if there is a Magic School Bus book, or cartoon that can further feed my fascination.

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