Dear Adulthood,
Hi. My name is Jillian. We met briefly when I turned 18, but haven’t had much contact since. I’ve heard a lot about you, and not all of it good. Some people say you suck the fun out of everything and require people to be serious all the time, but I’m sure that’s just gossip. Surely you can’t be all bad. I mean it’s because of you I got to vote and buy my first pack of cigarettes. And later, when I turned 21, I’m told it’s you that made it OK for me to finally buy alcohol. This was good because I was tired of getting people to buy booze for me. So thanks for that.
The rest of my letter...
Ever since I saw the episode of ER where Noah Wyle pulled a live roach from a patient’s ear, the fear of suffering the same fate has lived in the back of my mind. I’ve thought of wearing earplugs at night to prevent such an occurrence, but I never do. Instead, I clean my ears several times a day. Before I could adopt such a regiment though, I had to face the challenge of choosing the proper tools.
As a kid, I was taught to clean my ears with a Q-tip and a bit of alcohol (NOT the Jack Daniels kind). I would immerse one end of a q-tip in the sanitizing liquid, then stick it in my ear and swirl it around. This accomplished two things: 1) absolutely nothing; and 2) it pissed me off. Apparently this method only served to shift the wax slightly to the right instead of just removing it altogether. After a few failed attempts with this system, the time had come to move on.
More about my bad habit...
