I don’t think my mother had a sixth sense exactly, but she always seemed one step ahead of me when I was a kid. I didn’t get away with any malfeasance. One thing that regularly mystified me was how she always knew when I had dirt behind my ears. Granted, I was a filthy kid. I spent a lot of time digging and flinging dirt all around the place, but getting dirt behind your ears takes real effort.
I
can recall tromping inside the house at the end of the day and having Mother
immediately send me to wash up in the bathroom.
As soon as I reappeared, she would ask, “Did you wash behind your ears?”
“Yes.”
“No,
you didn’t”
“I
did.”
“Go
get a damp washcloth and come back here.”
You
know how this story ends. Every time I
came back, Mother quickly scrubbed behind my ears and then showed me the cloth. “See here?
Dirt.”
Every
time I looked at the cloth, there it was: dirt.
—Mitchell Hegman
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