Hearing is the last faculty that dies with a person. Into a dying ear one can still whisper last-moment endearments, assurances and sorry’s, or even share shocking news in the hope of waking up the dead.
Hearing is also the first to come alive; that is why pregnant mothers are told to play good music to their unborn child.
In my romantic teens I liked to think that ears were only for nibbling or for putting perfume behind. That’s why mothers always said, “Clean behind your ears!” My mom hung a lot of her jewelry on mine, so I guess she expected people to look at my ears.
Moms don’t put earrings on boys. One old riddle goes: What is it that girls have that boys do not? The answer? Holes for earrings. (No longer! The copycats have soon enough followed suit.)
When I was a kid it wasn’t yet common for baby girls’ ears to be pierced with a kind of puncher which simultaneously installs the earrings. Soon after birth, the infant’s earlobes got their earring holes with the use of needle and thread. A piece of thread remained, a small loop, always red with mercurochrome.
When the wound healed, the thread was replaced with the soft cartilage from a hen’s wing feather. This was kept in place until the hole was ready for an earring.
Eventually chickens got dressed and frozen, and so the method changed.
Piercing of the earlobes for ornamental purposes has been going on for thousands of years. There are antique photos of Cordillera women of primitive times with ear holes stretched and enlarged to accommodate ear plugs the width of a 25-centavo coin. The plugs were so heavy they made the ears long, almost reaching the shoulders. Did that mean those women were going to live long lives?
Yoda of “Star Wars” had extra long and big ears. He had lived an eternity and was very wise. He could move his ears, a feat that some boys would show off in my childhood days.
The ears’ many uses
Today, the only thing ears are plugged to are headsets. Earlier known as Walkman (because you could listen while walking), it was also the name given to pig’s ears roasted on the sidewalk along with Adidas (chicken feet), PAL (chicken wings) and helmet (chicken head).
Ears used to have a lot more uses than they seem to have today. I remember jeepney drivers in the 1950s storing the 10c fares of the passengers on either ear for easy access.
The ears’ more obvious uses are to keep long hair away from the face (until fashion decreed hair to look like a waterfall).
Ears were also for hooking eyeglasses frames to, until straight snug handles with brand names made hooks irrelevant.
For clerks, and editors maybe, the ear was also for resting a pencil or cigarette on.
In those days, ears were also used for computing age. People mostly didn’t remember their birthdays, and birth certificates were hard to trace. To make sure a kid was 7 years old and could attend public school, he would be made to put his right arm over his head and touch his left ear. (Before that age he can’t do it.) That was his entrance test.
The ear is also available for twisting when a pupil is absent from school for crazy reasons.
I used to have a best friend, the anthropologist E. Arsenio Manuel. He was in his 80s when I was in my late 50s. He told me the best tribal stories I have ever heard, but boy, was Lolo Manuel deaf! Over lunch in a restaurant, I would practically be shouting questions at him—since I could hear and he could not. He just smiled beatifically and answered everything softly. I always felt like the scandalous one. Until I hit on a perfect solution.
From that time on I wrote each question on a sheet of paper and he would write his answers under it. When I felt like getting back at him I would write “Balingot!” (half-deaf), “Bingi!” (deaf) or “Bingengot!” (hopeless). He would chuckle in great glee, looking angelic and sinless with his halo of white hair and big bald spot at the center.
Walls have ears
I don’t know why hearing aids were ever invented. Nobody I know likes to use theirs. And so, in a banquet of deaf guests, conversation goes something like this; “Are you going out of town?” “No, I’m going out of town.” “Sorry, I thought you were going out of town.”
Walls have ears, they say. People prefer saints’ statues made of wood (like the walls) rather than plaster because wooden saints supposedly hear your petitions better.
Deaf people, or those pretending to be (nagbibingi-bingihan), are described as having taingang kawali. Also people with no ear for music. It is at least not as bad as hawak sa tainga, transliterally, “led by the nose” (usually by the wife). Of course it would be so easy to get mad (magpanting ang tainga) over such an observation! It is much nicer to be pumapalakpak ang tainga which happens when one is complimented and loves it.
My BFF Manny Chaves is always music to my ears because he supplies me with CDs of good music to write or paint by. Beethoven, who was deaf when he composed some of his symphonies, is one of my favorites.
Some people are described as marunong makinig, or good listeners, or does it mean followers? Scolding or nagging of children by parents “goes in one ear and out the other” (pasok sa isang tainga, labas sa kabila) when they don’t listen. Too much nagging, or too much loud talking or loud TV can lead to an insufferable state called kinukulili ang tainga.
On the other hand, for those who purposely don’t listen, there is the parinig or pasaring. It is a comment not supposed to be heard, but in reality meant to catch the other’s attention. The only thing perhaps that one can’t avoid hearing is the mosquito buzzing in one’s ear. Maybe it’s still searching for its eternal enemy, the firefly.
I better end on a more exalted note with a Pangasinan hero tale called Amputing Layag (white ears). The rebel, maestro del campo Andres Malonga, was said to have cut off the ears of the Spaniards he had killed. He would then count the ears to see how many of the Kastila he had vanquished.
Since then Amputing Layag became a warning to other Pangasinenses not to pick a fight with anyone from Andres Malonga’s town. The inhabitants were not amputing layag for nothing. I’m not a Pangasinense but siac met, I wouldn’t!
Materials derived from The Body Book, edited by Fe Maria C. Arriola, GCF Books
