Remember yesterday when I showed you a couple of old family photos and asked you if you could tell what I physical characteristic I had in common with the folks in the photographs? It ought to have been obvious as I got older, but I never noticed it in other family members until I saw the picture of my great-grandmother in her hat. Some of you readers picked it out right away.
Now I wonder if I didn’t notice their sticky-out ear, was I the only one who noticed mine?
Gene Harper - Age 6
My dad had it, one ear tucked nicely in and one sticking out.
Elizabeth Harper - Age 6
You can see I have the same one in, one out, right down to the same ear.
Elizabeth, Margaret, & Jennie Harper
Of my father’s three children, I am the only one with two different kinds of ears. You can see it sticking out in the photo above.
This picture of my daughter taken when she was younger shows how her lovely ears go back nicely allowing her to wear her hair pulled back with no worries. I always wanted to do that when I was a teenager, but my ear looked funny.
It’s interesting how the ear thing skipped my sister Margaret and showed up in her son. Maybe that’s why people think he looks a lot like me.
Gifts Of The Journey 
Elizabeth, it is really cool you have a family trait. Do you ever notice something in one face and then start seeing it in many other faces? I’ve no doubt a distant cousin of John Singer Sargent’s Madame X works at the Macaroni Grill. They have the exact same nose! Obvious evidence of a mutual ancestor. I am sympathetic to the ear issue. I have the biggest-sticking-out-ish ears in the world, but so did my father and my grandfather and now that makes me feel closer to them. Back during the teenage years, of course I didn’t like them, especially after swimming when one not so nice boy said “hey, look at Laurie’s ears!!!”
Who’d have ever thought to look so closely at a family trait such as ears!! A wonderful study of genetics!!!
I don’t think anyone quite understands the vagaries of the sticky-out ear gene.