Do me a favor, and reach up and touch your right ear. I’m serious. Just touch it for a second.

Ears are funny things, aren’t they? We rarely think about them or look at them, unless we’re getting them pierced or trying to get intimate with someone. We see them every day when we look in the mirror, but we hardly notice them.

You never hear the compliment, “You have really nice ears.”

Now what would you do if you lost one? If, say, you were ejected from a spinning car at 70 mph through the back window onto the expressway and your ear was hanging onto your head by a strand of skin?

What if doctors did all they could to save it, to reattach it, but their best efforts couldn’t reverse the destruction?

Would you think about your ears then?

A week ago my stepbrother was in the car accident I just described. He, his girlfriend and the driver spun out in a Mustang on Interstate 294. Chad ended up next to the outside guardrail. Melissa, his girlfriend, was sprawled next to the concrete wall on the median. The driver was a couple hundred feet away, near the car.

None of them were wearing seat belts.

Melissa and the driver are both at home. Melissa recovered quickly and is awaiting plastic surgery to remove the scar from the gash on her face that required 20-odd stitches. The driver was treated for, essentially, bumps and bruises.

Chad is lying in an intensive care unit with his reattached right ear swollen and purplish, bleeding freely. Luckily, his hearing is unaffected. A nurse comes in hourly to apply leeches to his ear to stimulate the blood flow and, hopefully, the healing.

Chad is 20 years old. He’s got a good job, a solid beginning to a career. He’s been dating Melissa for four or five years, and they’ve recently begun talking about moving in together. He’s a car nut and owns two Mustangs, including one he just bought over Spring Break.

He’s got lots of family, lots of friends, and is generally the most carefree guy I know.

But now he lays in ICU and thinks about his ear all day.

The doctors aren’t sure it’ll take. He may have to get a prosthesis. And I’m sure that weighs on his mind like the world. We know we’re spectacularly fortunate he’s alive, and lucky that an ear is all he damaged.

But this isn’t a plea to get you to wear your seat belts. I was never comfortable wearing them before, and I’m not overwhelmingly inclined to do so now, something I’m sure will inspire some letters to the editor. Nor is this a plea to get you to slow down your wild Saturday night behavior.

Actually, this isn’t a plea to get you to do anything.

It’s a reminder that sometimes the little things we never pay attention to, like ears, become incredibly important when they may be lost.

After I visited Chad this weekend I started taking stock of all the “insignificant” things that are important to me that I never think about. Stuff like running a full-court game of basketball, or having the opportunity to write for a living, or eating my mom’s pecan pie.

It’s not so much that you shouldn’t take things for granted – it’s impossible not to just accept things you see or have on a daily basis. Rather, sit back and contemplate some things that you don’t realize are important, like your ears. Consider what you’d do if, for one reason or another, they disappeared.

Maybe you’ll take some precautions to protect them, maybe you won’t. But I hope you never have to think about whether you should have in a hospital, or at a funeral.