Postby MurphOnMillerAve » Sat Aug 04, 2018 12:45 am
Just the word "auger" would be enough to have me keep that contraption away from my head.
Tome warning….
OK. Here goes an ear wax story, a true one, from the world of teaching Eight Grade in the inner-city:
An athletic and popular African-American girl, Geneva, who had been troublesome in her previous classrooms, was transferred into my classroom, made as a request of me, in person, by the principal himself because he was of the opinion that I was known for my discipline and co-operation from the students. This was the early 70's. I was in my late-20's.
At the door of the classroom, with the principal still present, I asked Geneva where she would like to sit. She requested a seat "right up front," which indicated to me she was more interested in learning than in socializing. I assigned her a student-desk which abutted my own desk, kept there for special academic and disciplinary purposes. She smiled and took her place in her new classroom, quietly and quickly. I noticed some of the other students rolling their eyes. (As I found out later, Geneva had had a reputation for getting in the way of academic progress in several classrooms she was "tried-out" in.)
After some initial chattiness, which I absorbed concluding it was due to her being new in the class, I cautioned her, more with my facial expression than any overt verbal admonishment, and she readily complied each time, seemingly puzzled that I had to speak to her about her "whispering" to classmates near her during my teaching at the front of the room. Her whispering was actually more of a talking out loud, with an emphasis on loud.
Somehow, I just could not let myself believe that she would be so deliberately disrespectful - to herself and her classmates, as well as to me - by talking with considerable volume sitting at the front of her new classroom, while I was in the act of teaching, no less.
Then, for some reason, it hit me, that she couldn't hear me, that she thought she was whispering but was actually being loud.
Her spontaneously saying a word or two to nearby classmates while a lesson was in progress seemed natural for a newbie, but to be loud about it just made me more cautious. I was more puzzled than unhappy. So, I wondered if she were hard-of-hearing, rather than deliberately rude. She was too happy to be in our room to have let herself jeopardize a positive relationship with me for mere willfulness and attention-seeking from peers.
So, I quickly wrote out a hallway-pass for her to go to the nurse's office to be examined for hearing ability. It was a Wednesday. I knew the doctor would be present in the building for his Wednesday visit to our building.
Approximately an hour later (I had sent a student to check on Geneva to make sure she had, in fact, gone to the nurse and had not left the building,) Geneva rushed back into the classroom, with the nurse in-tow. She threw her arms around me and gave me an excited hug. "I can hear! I can hear, sir!' she said.
Her ears had been so dirty and plugged-up with earwax, that the doctor had to use a particular device to remove it, one of the plugs being nearly an inch long, thick, dense, and tough. Apparently, both ears had been plugged-up for years.
All those times she had been seen as being rude to teachers and classmates by speaking loudly during lessons, she was, in her estimation, only whispering.
Having the earwax plugs removed changed her life, for her, and for those around her, she said.
She visited me for many years after graduation, always hugging me Hello and blessing me with the biggest smile ever. I believe she became a nurse.
"Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool." Proverbs 10: 21-28
Is that bad? 
