a.k.a. another thing to worry about when you’re lying awake in bed…
(Click on the emoticon below for the link; I couldn’t think of actual link text that was more appropriate than the one symbol.)
Aw, crap, I didn’t need to read that! I spent years as a kid terrified that earwigs would get in my ear and lay eggs in my brain (I’m sure I’m not the only person who heard that urban legend).
I had a bug in my ear once when I was 8. It was a gnat that had somehow got into my ear during a field trip we were taking. I could hear it buzzing in there for the entire afternoon and it drove me absolutely crazy. I ended up going home and by the time my dad got home the buzzing stopped, so I never got taken to the doctor. We assumed the bug got out somehow.
Fast forward about 3 months. I was at the doctor office for my 6 month physical and the doctor looks in my ear to see… a dead bug. I believe my reaction was, “Huh? Oh yeah, I remember that.” He rinsed it out and I was quite surprised to see how small it was.
I once had the unfortunate experience of watching one of those reality ER shows. On it, they brought in a girl who had a cockroach in her ear canal. It had crawled in while she was sleeping and had gotten stuck. It was still alive when they managed to fish it out.
The horror remains with me still.