Traveling the World

Imagine entering the People’s Park in Chengdu after having watched shows about it for years. You know exactly why you’re going, and insist on the journey. You enter from the front gate, a bit nervous but excited at the idea of finally being able to tick off the experience in your mind as something you’ve wanted to do for a while. You reach the back of the park and find your man. You sit down in the chair and let him go to work…cleaning your ears.

“Heheheh,” you laugh, as the instruments he use tickle you. He wiggles it around inside your head, finally pulling it out and showing you just how bad you are. The cotton ball is FULL of guk and nasty wax, and he tells you to take better care of yourself. He throws the ball away, and pulls out his second tool, and thrusts your head to the side for a better view. It’s almost like a giant pair of tweezers, and you feel like his next objective, after having removed the wax blocking the path, is to remove bits of your brain and show it to you…like a frontal lobotomy, but through the ear.

You relax as you realize you’re still sitting in the peaceful People’s Park, and not some mad scientist’s lab. Within a few minutes it’s all over, and you smile at having endured the relentless prodding of your inner ear, for a price most foreigners would be shocked over: $2.50.