Thank you, Brad, for giving me a topic to write about. Otherwise you would have had to suffer through another photo of my foot or something.
Let’s talk about hearing loss. A couple of years ago I was getting so aggravated because I had a headache and my right ear was bothering me. Lloyd and I were assembling some lock-together-type metal shelves and when we would bash them with a hammer I wanted to cry because it was SO LOUD in my right ear!!! I stuffed tissue in it and we kept assembling.
So, I made an appointment with the ear doctor. I complained about the ear, and he brought out… a tuning fork. Was this a singing audition? No, he struck it and placed the handle on the middle of my forehead. Great. Voodoo.
Doctor: “Can you hear that?”
Me: “Yes.” (It was ringing in my brain. Did he think I was stupid?)
He struck it again and put it against the bone just behind my left ear.
Doctor: “Which ear do you hear that in?”
Me: (Silencing the ‘Duh’ that I wanted to say, I pointed to my left ear.)
He did it again and put it against the bone just behind my right ear.
WHAT THE WHAT???
Doctor: “Which ear do you hear that in?”
Me: (Pointing frantically at my LEFT ear. He really was doing voodoo!! AHHHH!!!!)
Well, it turns out that it’s not voodoo, and I wasn’t having super-hearing in my right ear, I’m going deaf in my left ear. It’s called otosclerosis. Apparently the little bones in my left ear are stuck together, so I don’t hear very well through the air, but the awesome super-power of this is that I hear things through my skeleton!! There are pluses and minuses to this.
Plus: I can hear a tuning fork if you put the handle on my elbow or hip bone. (Not quite the shin bone, though – it’s too far away.)
Minus: I can hear the plumbing rattle at school when I lean against the wall waiting for boys to finish in the bathroom.
Plus: When I bite the end of my ukulele and strum it my whole head turns into a cathedral! (Yeah, it sounds weird, but you don’t know.)
Minus: When someone at the end of the pew sings bass at church I want to scream because it’s SO LOUD in my head!
So there you have it. My only sorta-superpower and it’s a) useless and b) eventually going to be debilitating.