The pearl got stuck in his right ear when Wright was 5 and roughhousing with his sister, Regina. The family lived in Chicago at the time.
"She had broken my mother's pearl necklace," Wright said. "I can remember (our baby sitter) picking them up off the floor - except for two, of course."
Regina stuck those two missing pearls - either by accident or because kids do weird things - into her older brother's ear.
A doctor retrieved one of the pearls from the child's ear, but missed the other. Wright has undergone ear exams in the years since, but the pearl was never discovered until the nurse at St. Mary's Hospital found it. http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/121810/new_758269052.shtml -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Merritt Melancon)
he visited during the past years.