The reason this is such a common question is that moms can see behing their kids ears if they have short hair. They’ll see them from above and behind and can see the dirt. Kids, at best, will just look in the mirror and if they can’t see the dirt will assume it doesn’t exist.
I read an article a while ago about the different approach men and women take to personal hygiene in general. One example was that many men (allegedly) forget to clean the spaces between their toes. In the days after reading that article, my shower routine took me somewhat longer than usual.
As to cleaning behind the ears, I don’t fully understand how this would be an issue since washing your hair (which is a part of any shower session) involves rubbing the head from all sorts of angles.
Not if you’re a little boy.
Or, to be fair, a little girl. Showering is a learned skill, and one that most kids aren’t terribly interested in learning until they begin puberty.
Clearly the OP never worked on a farm. Dust, grain/hay dust, etc. get into all sorts of nooks and crannies. When you come in from working you wash your face and hands. (Bathing just to come in and eat is out of the question.) It’s easy to tell looking in a mirror if your face and neck are clean. But not so behind your ears. And that area really does collect dirt.
Ditto other jobs that are becoming rare. It’s a blue collar thing.
Kids, in olden times, played outside a lot more in dirtier environments. They needed to be taught how to properly clean up for supper.
This is better suited to IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
When I was a 20-year-old-student, my friend who was studying medicine asked to use me to practice her “basic patient examination”. Everything went well, except that she told me I should rub better behind my ears because I had some, uh, stuff back there that shouldn’t be there. I’ve been rubbing thoroughly ever since! 
(This concerns a crease behind my ears, between the cartilage part and the head. If you think about old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses, the curved extremity of the arms/branches would fall in the crease in question. I think not everybody has a crease there.)
ETA: I’m not an outdoorsy type, never worked on a farm, and washed my short-cropped hair (and everything else) daily. I just didn’t rub exactly behind my ears.
I still wash behind my ears. I perspire heavily in all weathers, and after a couple of days I start to make my own gravy back there.
I once went on a date with a guy who obviously didn’t wash behind his ears (we were 20ish at the time).
I caught a glimpse of a glob of dirt when we met up and I had to suppress my giggles throughout the whole date (I kept having that line run through my mind!). There was no second date.
Huh. I’ve never made any effort to clean behind my ears, any more so than I do to clean my elbows, which is none. I figure plenty of soap and water gets back there on its own just by virtue of being in the shower. No odor whatsoever, and I have confirmation. (My girlfriend: “You want me to what? Your ears? You are so weird.”) Y’all are just stinky.
That’s what I assumed, once I got old enough to realise it probably didn’t mean what it seemed to mean.
I ask my kids to clean behind their ears. I ask about (in order):
Hair, Face, Legs, Arms, Belly, Back, Bum, Privates, Feet, Toes, Ears
With my son, he usually makes it all the way through the list. My daughter sometimes doesn’t make it past hair. It usually takes three showers before she is actually done.
Aside: when not stuck in a classroom, my kids spend every available waking moment outside running around. I really want them to get clean when they bathe or there is stinkiness galore.
I always took the cleaning behind your ears to be shorthand for ‘did a good job’ myself.
Thing is, we don’t know about all the cases that were prevented. Maybe this is the one that fell through the cracks here, too.
The main thing is that we can’t do any prevention now in this case, and so it has nothing to do with whether the sentence is just. This woman has refused to even recognize that what she did was wrong. Until she does, or is rendered unable to do it again, she is not fit to walk among society.
Thing is, we don’t know about all the cases that were prevented. Maybe this is the one that fell through the cracks here, too.
The main thing is that we can’t do any prevention now in this case, and so it has nothing to do with whether the sentence is just. This woman has refused to even recognize that what she did was wrong. Until she does, or is rendered unable to do it again, she is not fit to walk among society.
[/QUOTE]
giggle How DARE you, perfectparanoia? How. Dare. You.
(I assume this was meant for another thread, yes?)