BLATHER REVIEW

**the sound of crickets chirping**

Wow, I haven't posted anything in a week.

I had jury duty last tuesday and every night last week I just stared my monitor screen desperately wanting to write about what I thought of our verdict. I put the whole thing together -- over and over -- and ended up never bothering to type it up.
And now I don't ever want to think about it again.

But, just to get back into blogging mode, I'll tell ya a little story about moi that I bet I've never mentioned here before:

I was essentially deaf in my left ear for 4 1/2 years:

It all started in the spring of 1993. My left ear would "close up" every now and then, sometimes lasting for a couple of days at a stretch. I vcleaned my ears with some stuff I got at a pharmacy, but it kept happening. My boss's wife (at the time) told me that it was probably a sinus problem. Dang.

For a year I went from Stereophonic to monophonic hearing. Then, in the spring of '94, my left ear closed up for good.
I kept waiting for it to open up again, but it wouldn't. Not for any meaningful length of time, anyway.

It opened up when I was at the beach for the July '94 fireworks, and when I went to Jones Beach with my friend Dave to see Elvis Costello.
At Jones Beach my ear opened up just as we took our seat high up in the stands overlooking the shoreline and stayed open throughout the show. Yay!
But, after climbing down again and driving further from the beach, that ear just sealed right back up. D'oh!

Only when I was at a beach or at a high altitude did I ever regain hearing in that ear. And there I was trying to mix my homemade music tapes into fake stereo while listening in mono.

Then, in September of '98, we had a downpour that lasted for two days. It was the kind of downpour that makes the once humid and heavy air crisp and cool and clear.
Toward the end of the first day my left ear opened up! Woo Hoo! As the first day turned into a second day of deluge, I could still hear in stereo. Please don't ever let this rain stop! As soon as it stops I'll be half-deaf again!

But, the rain did stop, and my ear stayed open. A few days more and I knew it was over. 4 1/2 years of having to cock my head at weird angles just to hear what someone to my left was trying to tell me were finally gone! Six years on and I've never had a relapse.

Now if I could only find my glasses I could see who was saying all those nasty things to me.

Posted by Tuning Spork at October 25, 2004 09:52 PM