I was getting pretty deaf, but kept putting it off because having some assistant poke that metallic thing in your ear and hit you with the high-pressure thrusts of water is not my favorite experience. Kind of paranoid my poor eardrum will crack and burst open.

When I made the appointment by telephone, the receptionist suggested that I soak my ears ahead of time with salad oil. That would loosen the hardened wad of wax in order to ease the whole process of prying it out with water pressure, as painlessly and efficiently as possible.

Did you say salad oil?!

Yes. Here is what you have to do. Place the side of your head on the pillow and with an eye-dropper, let a few drops fall into the opening and ooze itself into the dark orifice. Wait two minutes. Turn your head around and repeat the process for the other side. Ignore the unpleasant feeling of the oil oozing out and sliding down your face.

That's what I did, just like she told me to do.

The next morning I arrived at the doctor's office, went up to the counter and whispered embarrassingly that I had arrived for my ten o'clock appointment. "To clean out your ears!" the nice lady shouted out loud so that everyone in the waiting room could hear. One person even chuckled under his breath.

I held the flat tray next to my right ear first and the powerful squirting began. Chug-a-lug-squirt-squirt-squirt-chug. My eyes both squint shut and my hand grabbed the tray so tightly that if it weren't made out of solid metal it would have shattered in a second.

In less than ten seconds it was all over. "Hey look!" she pointed as if she had discovered a magnificent nugget after panning for gold. There was that disgusting blob of dirty matter wrapped in hairs and flakes and other awful-looking dried bodily fluid stuff, giving me the dry heaves.

"Do you see it?" A quick glance and then "Yes, yes, get it away from me!"

The second and last ear went even more quickly, the disgusting blob even bigger and more awful-looking than the first. Yuk and another dry heave. I didn't even look this time around.

It's almost like losing a part of yourself, I would say. So perhaps I should have gathered up enough courage to ask her if I could take them home as a kind of souvenir. You know, put them in a bottle of formaldehyde, place it on some prominent shelf next to my other trophies, show and impress the family and friends. But in the end I didn't.

The salad oil really helped. Now I can hear everything crystal clear again. Next.