Huckleberries: It’s hard to listen with an ear of corn

You might want to read the following if you’re tempted to tell someone to stick an object where the sun doesn’t shine. In an ear, of course. Family Phil, a stay-at-home Coeur d’Alene father, was planning dinner one evening when his daughter said she had a popcorn seed in her ear. Seems the darn thing simply jumped in her ear as she rested on the couch. And it was beginning to hurt “a teensy tiny bit.” In his blog, A Family Runs Through It, Family Phil explains how he thought his daughter was joking – until he grabbed a flashlight and peeked. “Sure enough,” posts Phil, “there was a shiny little popcorn kernel.” Dinner plans were put on hold as Phil took his daughter to the ER. That’s when things got interesting. The attending physician had little trouble extracting the kernel. But he wasn’t done. “Wait a minute,” he said, “there’s another one.” Out came a hard piece of wax that looked like a popcorn seed. And that still wasn’t all. “I see something else,” he declared, continuing to fish in the child’s ear. At last, he pulled out a small piece of pink foam that Phil figures “might have come from a birthday party my daughter attended” a week earlier. Afterward, the doctor gave Family Phil’s daughter the mandatory warning re: not putting anything bigger than her elbow in her ear. She received a popsicle, too. With all the joking and the treat, Phil’s daughter had a good time – so much so that on the way home she declared: “That was fun. Let’s do it again.” Phil groaned and wondered where he could find earmuffs “until she figures out not to stuff things into her ear!”