Clean your ears

Yesterday. Sitting at my desk. Sun streaming in the window. Excel spreadsheet swimming before my eyes. My loving husband comes up to me, looks into my eyes, and says…

“Did you leave q-tips covered in ear wax on the bathroom sink?”

I am taken aback. I stare at him, thinking he surely most be joking, or I didn’t hear him correctly. Alan, on the other side of the room starts snickering. Aaron asks again, and I slowly answer “Nooo”. I’m thinking – I hardly ever use Q-tips to clean my ears. A friend told me once that a doctor had yelled at him for doing so, warning him that he was ruining his hearing. Maybe I clean them once a month or so, I don’t know, I don’t remember the last time I did. This is not important to me to remember, there are many more important things consuming my mind, I don’t have the memory space available to track q-tip use.

Aaron continues, “Well I haven’t used that bathroom at all today until just now.” He turns on Alan, who is now laughing harder. “Did you do it?” Alan can hardly answer he’s laughing so hard. “No, man, I didn’t, I’m just laughing at you asking Lydia.” Aaron is not convinced. “It’s gross! They are totally coated in wax, it couldn’t be the kids, and I don’t think it was Mom, you had to do it!” He continues the interrogation for a few minutes, then gives up sit down and scowls at his computer for a while. Surely Alan or I have caused this rude interruption in his bathroom time, but we are not budging. No one will take the blame. We have an q-tip using, ear cleaning bandit, I fear the mystery will never be solved.