The Trouble with Ears

My ear hurts. My left ear. It has pains in it, deep down inside.  I had forgotten what an earache feels like, but I have been vividly reminded today. I have been lying here, thinking of exactly how to describe it.  It's a unique pain, I think.  It really is an ache, along with an occasional sharp stab.  But I think that ache describes it best.

I had what seemed like constant earaches as a child.  I remember the pain, and it seemed like nothing could get to it, to ease it.  My mother would put oil in my ear, sweet oil I think it was called, and stuff a wad of cotton in there. I can remember what the oil smelled like, and how it felt when she took the dropper and let a few drops fall into my ear canal.  I always put my ear on a heating pad, on my pillow, and cried and cried. There just didn't seem to be anything else to do, except cry. We didn't have Tylenol back then, so I suppose I chewed up a couple of baby aspirins, but I don't remember them easing the pain.  Instead, it's the ache that I recall.  

Once, when I was five, I had an earache, and I took a nap with the heating pad.  I remember waking up and feeling something wet on the side of my face.  When I looked at my pillow, there was blood all over it.  I ran to find my mother, and showed her.  She said that my ear drum had burst, and she and my father took me to Dr. Coleman. A visit to Dr. Coleman always meant a shot in the rear end, and maybe some gross medicine I called "yellow goop".  The only good part about a visit there was the piece of Bazooka bubblegum I got after the shot. 

I was lying down earlier, thinking about ears and my earache, and I remembered a favorite book from my childhood.  I used to check it out from the library at Highland, when I was about 9 years old.  No telling how many times I read it.  Remember how you signed for books when checking them out, inside the front cover? You could look back at that and see how many times you had checked it out, or who else had.  The name of this particular book was, "The Trouble with Jenny's Ear".  It was about a girl named Jenny who could suddenly hear people's thoughts.  It was written by Oliver Butterworth, and published in 1960.  I remember that the book made me uncomfortable, because it dealt with what happens when you hear something you shouldn't; for instance, when you hear what someone really thinks of you, and it hurts.  The book made a big impression on me, that's for sure.

I think I will go find some pain reliever and maybe the heating pad.  I am not putting anything in my ear.  I read all about earaches when my kids were small and suffered with them, and the oil doesn't do any good at all, anyway. Not that I would have any, but still...

  
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