Should you remove listeners before removing an object?

I have a sprite that removes itself when it’s “loop” event occurs. Should I remove the sprite event listener before removing the object? Here’s a code snippet.

[lua]explosion:addEventListener( “sprite”, function(event)
local phase = event.phase
if phase == “loop” then
local explosion = event.target
explosion:removeSelf()
end
end)[/lua]

here I added a listener and used an anonymous function to handle the event. Should I remove the listener before removing the object? If so how to get a reference to the object inside the anonymous function? (don’t tell me event.target…) [import]uid: 98652 topic_id: 25666 reply_id: 325666[/import]