We'd stuff cotton between our toes and paint our nails in chintz-covered club chairs.

"Nurses were stuffing cotton into baby bottle nipples and experimenting with other things, but nothing really worked."

Like: No, I stuffed cotton in my ears.

The field suit muted his voice and made it sound faraway to him, as if he had stuffed cotton in his ears.

I once met a hospitalized Mexican farm laborer who stuffed cotton in his ears and nose, and wore goggles and a bandanna over his mouth.

He'd stuffed cotton up his nostrils, taken some aspirin, and figured he'd be okay.

I envied a cellist who had stuffed cotton in his ears.

Even the few children on board were pressed into service, to stuff rags and cotton around the sprung doors and windows of their cabins.

Some were stuffing cotton into cloth arms and legs while others unwound skeins of yellow yarn to be used as the doll's hair or pulled on her blue pinafore and black shoes.

Mr. Merkle stuffed cotton in his jaws to affect his subject's pudgy face.