Printing and Ears

At work, there are alarmingly few printers for the volume of people needing to print.  This means that quite often, the single page you want to print is held in a queue and a lot of time is wasted hanging around printer areas waiting for these enormous machines to spit out decorated paper.

Whilst wasting time waiting for my pretty pictures to come out of the machine this morning, I noticed that a gentleman near the front of the printer queue had remarkably hairy ears.  The hairs were not just sprouting from inside the ear, but also completely covered the outside of his ears, both cartilage and lobe. 

I was completely spellbound by this chap's ears and could hardly stop myself staring.  Some hairs looked course and bristly while other hairs looked softer and more downy.  Some were dark and others fair, but all were seemingly without pattern.  I observed these strange, furry ears for as long as was polite… well, until he collected his printing and walked away. 

I was so fascinated that I have spent the remainder of the morning surreptitiously ogling the ears of every man that comes close enough for me to see.  I have noticed that cases of such extremely hairy ears, whilst relatively unusual are not that rare.  In fact, there is a man in my department with just such ears, although his fur is more even in colour and texture than the chap's was at the printer this morning.   

The strangest thing is that the hair on their heads is shorter than the hair on their ears.  Surely their respective barbers must have offered to trim them up as part of their 'short back and sides'?  Furthermore, both of the men I have mentioned are married and I have to ask myself why their wives have not noticed their condition and done something to remedy it.  It would drive me bonkers.

I spend a lot of time in meetings and I shall make every effort to sit in a different place and next to a different person each time so that I can investigate this phenomenon further.  And I plan to check DH's ears carefully this evening, tweezers in hand, for the slightest sign of sprouting…