Since 1984, twelve
hotel guests cleaned their ear with a Q-tip, extracted it, noticed that the
cotton had vanished, and called for a doctor.
These were stressful
visits because I worried that the cotton might be too far inside to reach, and I
don’t like poking with needle-nosed tweezers. Mostly, I was lucky, but one
visit didn’t work out as planned.
“I don’t see anything,” I said after looking
in the ear. The guest insisted
that I must be in error. I looked again. Nothing that didn’t belong.
While he thought
this over, I looked in the bathroom. On the floor near the sink lay a tiny ball
of cotton.
He tried to laugh
this off, but I could see his pain. I’d made the visit at the request of a
housecall service that had already collected on his credit card, so there was
no way I could give him a discount. It was an expensive mistake.
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