Quick, Hide the Mistletoe: Wear Ear Protection

Is it really a scream if you can't hear it?

Wow! This warning comes just in time for the holioday season, and you'll be thanking me for calling this to your attention while you can still hear. I look at it as a public service because there are folks out there who get all puckered up this time of year, and I would like them to be able to hear themselves sing "Auld Lang Syne" in a month or so.
Here's the scoop. It seems that a young woman in Zhuhai, China, was passionately kissing her paramour when her eardrum was punctured! Lest you think there's a misplaced knitting needle somewhere (not unlike the guy last week who who claimed to have shot his wife during a passionate moment of sex), there was a medical reason for it all, according to doctors.
"A hard kiss reduced the pressure in the mouth, pulled the eardrum out and caused a breakdowen of the ear," according to a press release. Pulled it out as in outside the ear? I'm puzzled. Another noted that an imbalance in ear pressure between two inner ears leads to a broken eardrum. Wow! That's some "hard" kiss! Maybe they do it differently in China.
All of this will come as good news to those who consider themselves the masters of restraint since it will give them a bona fide medical reason not to get too frisky.
Doctors in China are encouraging kissers to proceed with caution, and the 20-something young lady is expected to recover her hearing in a couple of months. That's going to be a LONG couple of months for a certain young man in China, I suspect...unless there are other activities which do not cause such air pressure. Hmmm!
So, either hide the mistletoe, engage in the peck-of-the-cheek type of kiss, or don't tell anyone else and hope it doesn't happen to you. If it does, don't come crying to me because I won't be able to hear you for a couple of months...if I play my proverbial cards right.