Style: Personal essay
Disclaimers: 1. My use of quotes do not mean that they are direct quotations; I do not remember the exact words spoken, but instead have chosen words to capture the intent of the speaker while doing my best to stay true to what they actually said.
2. I am NOT a Democrat.
Earily Big
“Pinch your nose with your right hand and move your other arm through the space. There. Now swing the left arm back and forth like a nose trunk. You’re an elephant!”
Only years later did I realize that my cousin was not affectionately playing animal games with me, but rather mocking my large ears, implicitly comparing them to Dumbo the elephant. He was also smart enough to have taken a picture of my posture. My famous pose is now captured for eternity and proudly displayed on my grandmother’s wall.
Indeed, my ears are quite large. This is especially apparent after a haircut, when they stick out like wings on an airplane. They’ve been yanked by my uncle, flicked by my cousins, and laughed at by my grandma. Only my father, whom I inherited the oversized hearing device from, had anything positive to say. He reassured me: “In Chinese societies, having big ears is a good thing. It means that you are smart. Buddha had big ears!” I’d much rather be compared to Jesus. For whatever reason, walking across water seems a little more appealing than sitting under a tree and meditating. But I guess I’ll take what I can get. Big-eared buffoons can’t be choosy.
Having large ears has consequences that most do not consider. For one, it is near impossible to find a pair of reasonably-priced headphones that fit. Most earpieces simply fall out of my giant abyss of an ear. It’s like trying to feed dimes in an arcade machine that only takes quarters. You can insert them all you want, but they invariably just come right back out. Why is it that size 42 pants are always on sale, but large headphones are so expensive? Also, beanies have become a fashion faux pas. My ears protrude quite comically through the skin-tight material. At first I just thought that I had purchased oddly shaped beanies. I told myself that they were on sale for a reason. One full-priced beanie later, I finally concluded that this type of headwear was definitely a no-go.
Most curious, my big ears do not make me genetically superior in the auditory sense. I’m not really sure how the ear works—something about a hammer, anvil, and stirrup, and I think there’s some drum in there as well. Equipped with this highly sophisticated scientific knowledge, I hypothesize that the vastness of my ear creates too large a cavity for sound to effectively disperse. In any case, I apologize to my neighbors who must overhear the audio commentary of the epic Lakers games I religiously watch. Along the same lines, I hope that those near me enjoy the music on my iPod. If not, I’d gladly take donations for better-fitting earphones.
But there are some perks. As I have gotten older, the mocking and physical torment on my ears has lessened, and I am liberated from my own self-consciousness to laugh along when jokes are made. And it’s nice to have a distinguishing feature that I can talk about when others complain about body parts I didn’t know existed. “Ugh I have such bad cuticles!” “My hair has so many split ends!” “Um…I have big ears?”
Besides, I think big ears have now become fashionable. I suddenly see them appearing in all sorts of cartoons. And I cannot help but feel that I partook in this revolution that brought justice and pride to all big-eared people everywhere. Because in the November of 2008, I took a stand. At that moment, I decided that enough was enough. I was tired of the mockery, ill-fitting headphones, and disgrace from the beanies. I was tired of all if it. It was time to vote in a big-eared President of the United States. I had had enough of the elephants.
