Through the Ears of a Child By Barbara Sisney Daniel

The happiest years of my life were spent raising my son. He was a happy child, full of adventure and curiosity. Any new word or statement was an experiment. He loved for me to read to him. When he started to school, we read the “Laura Ingalls Wilder” story and “Greek Mythology.” David was a delightful child with a huge imagination.

One day, he came in from playing outside where he had a sand box. He didn’t say anything to me, just stood around where I was working in the kitchen. I looked at him and saw he was digging in both ears. I pulled him to me and asked him why he was having trouble with his ears. 

He had a puzzled look on his little face and replied, “Oh, nothing, mama.”

I looked at his ears and to my horror I found them packed with sand. I called the doctors’ office immediately. I thought he had ruined his ears and was hysterical! The nurse who had taken care of him since he was a baby, told me to get the small syringe I had used on his nose when he was a baby and fill it with warm water to wash the ears out and that he would be okay.

After I washed his ears out, I proceeded to question him.

David took me by the hand and led me out to the sand box where he had been playing and showed me a little funnel he had found. He had taken the sand, and put it into each ear through the funnel. 

I asked him why he had done this, and his reply was, “I just wanted to see if it would go in one ear and out the other.”

Be careful what you say, “little pitchers have big ears.”