I like this and similar gifs.

My favorite moment was in the first episode when Cyclops made a " … Not!" joke.

The rest of the series was also awesome, but that was the peak for me.

I won’t have hope until victory is officially determined.

Pessimists only get happy surprises.

Cicadas still exist.

Despite my sassy teasing, I liked you already based on our initial interaction.

I like you better now.

The information in your post is useful and appreciated.

But Ford was Zaphod’s cousin, not nuclear family member, so your username is unacceptable.

I just remembered, also don’t his parents move in with him at some point? That seems weird.

That sounds familiar.

I remember two specific parts (sadly without many details):

At one point, the protagonist kills an animal and finds himself staring at a particular organ, apparently craving the nutrients provided by that organ.

At another point, he boils water in a leaf, observing that a leaf will never burn below the top of the water due to the water keeping the leaf moist.

I probably should know whether either of those claims are realistic, but I’ve never been in a survival situation and I still don’t know to this day.

I was homeschooled from age 7 to age 11 and read the book in a similar timeframe. My parents had some trouble getting bureaucratic approval to take us out of school. IIRC about the book, the main character just took a sabbatical from school, entirely withdrawing without an alternative education plan. I remember wondering about the logistics of that, which I guess is why the point sticks in my mind.

I think the heron slash might have been the catalyst for the whole story, otherwise I don’t know why it might have stayed with me.

I do also remember liking all three books, even though Little Tree - presented as an autobiography - turned out to be a lie. It’s still enjoyable as fiction.

The only things I remember about the story are the protagonist getting a sabbatical from school and getting slashed by the beak of a heron. Did those things happen in that book?

Also, did you like My Side of the Mountain and The Education of Little Tree?

Last question … Were your parents hippies, too?

(This post might age me somewhat.)

Memes get old. Often pretty quickly.

Subversions are wonderful.

What happened on Wednesday?

edit: also, What Happened to Monday?

It’s not a word one sees often, agreed, but I love it.

What are you, my erstwhile employer?

“Americans think 100 years is old. Europeans think 100 miles is far.”

No other woman has ever done that to me unless I was already in a relationship with them. I don’t mind a casual hair ruffling, but if that’s what it was it’s still surprising to me.

When I was in my early twenties, a girl I had a crush on but who was dating my friend came up behind me and scritched my head. I’m married to a different woman now and have a kid, but I still wonder about that interaction. I can relate.

For me, the impaction was only mitigated after leaving the peroxide in for an extended period.

I did have a pool-related impaction one other time before I started using q-tips regularly. I went to the doctor for that and they pushed it out using some kind of manual water pump. It worked and the obstruction came out of my ear, but until that happened it felt like earwax (and water) were going to come out of my nose. I don’t know if that’s normal, but it was unpleasant.

One last mostly unrelated (and entirely unprompted) aside: my first encounter (that I remember, at least) with q-tips was right when I was a boy approaching puberty. My mother cleaned my ears with wet q-tips and I complained of the unpleasant feeling. She told me “if you don’t keep your ears clean, no girl will ever stick her tongue down your ear!” At the time it sounded nice just to have any contact with a girl, but now that I’m an adult I have to avoid wondering about that sentence that my mother said to me.

Oh, I don’t disagree regarding regular use being a pain. I used 3 q-tips after every shower (one per ear for the various crevasses, then the opposite ends of a shared one to - as you say - scoop from the main canal). For at least two reasons I wouldn’t want to use peroxide that way every day.

However, twice in my life I’ve gotten my ears clogged to the point that q-tips just made it worse. In both of those cases, peroxide worked miracles.