Lead Us Not Into Deafness, But Deliver Us From Earwax

As a mere tike – blissfully ignorant of endemic corruption, disease, and Sub-Saharan pestilence – The Bastard was nearly pegged as a “special needs child” by the sandbox czars of his elementary school. Then again, during the salad days of Reaganomics, politically correct euphemism had yet to intrude upon our synthesizer coveting, legwarmer-clad society. In the red-bricked realm of education, terms like “special” (retarded), “exceptional” (fucking insane), or in my case “hearing impaired” (stone cold deaf) were but a mere twinkle in the eye of the next decade’s niggling liberal wuss. In fact, one could argue that our resident nurse, in the parlance of the times, advised my mother to “drag my deaf ass to an otologist” or risk having one of those atrocious phonograph cones rammed through my eardrum in an emergency implant procedure that would horrify 90% of the third world. Or so I imagined. To a free wheeling second grader raised on Saturday morning Loony Tunes marathons, reality and stupidity can become dreadfully blurred. When left unchecked, said stupidity might even cause a child to flunk his hearing test. Accidentally. Affecting enough distress upon his thoroughly vexed parents to involve the services of a revered and expensive ear specialist, 200 miles away.

I’m not normally an idiot, but I sometimes play one inadvertently. Although Nurse Ratched promptly fitted me with oversize manhole cover headphones (known affectionately as “cans”), she neglected to explain the rules of the test, at least in a manner palatable to a lunchbox toting rugrat with recess on the brain. Or perhaps, in the most eye winking of ironies, I neglected to listen. Whatever the case, most thumb twiddling brats understood that a series of tones was to be activated in either the right or left headphone with varying degrees of randomness. Upon detecting each sounder, this captive audience of nose bleeders, ass pickers, and lice heads (i.e. the future of America), was instructed to tap the correct ear from whence the notes originated. And in roughly ten minutes, following an approvingly curt nod and hair tussle from the test administrator, one could return to their regularly scheduled lesson on “just saying no” to candy from molesters, already in progress. In other words, you needn’t be some telepathic savant to acknowledge a few simple tweets of Morse code. But to a clueless, diminutive horse’s arse like this writer – unable to steady a humongous apparatus atop his tiny crown much less comprehend the nonsense of haphazard beeps – results were faked out of frantic desperation; arms alternately flailing with the zeal of a Tourette’s patient on a particularly trying afternoon. Hell, I’d mastered the colorblind exam like a champ (you know, numbers hidden amongst a series of dots), and rightfully sailed into this one with the ego of an overconfident prizefighter. Knocked unconscious before the first round.

Staggering ignorance aside, my hearing was fine, exemplary even, or so argued the specialist flown in from Washington DC to assuage my parents’ concerns. Wax buildup, on the other hand, was a hot button issue, as my cochlear canal evidently resembled the inside of a beehive; assuming the bees were jacked up on crack cocaine and worked sturdily through the night like your typical long-haul trucker. Over the next several weeks, (what felt like) gallons of Debrox solution were unceremoniously dumped into both ears, clearing the blockages in the hopes that I could one day pass floss through my empty head in the manner of some Coney Island freak show draw. Unnervingly, the medicine would sizzle and pop, like bacon in a pan, as I lay in the fetal position every night, pondering the exact spot where my life had veered so horribly off the rails. Emergency earwax removal had assumed key placement in the evening ritual of goodnight hugs and the Our Father, and I could either accept it with maturity, or accept it like a whimpering sissy-boy, depending on how the mood struck. Thankfully, this liquid ear excavator, whatever it was, it is still produced – and no one to my knowledge was jailed for producing it – alleviating any concerns of having received the aural version of thalidomide while ensnared in my own (death) bed; dad overseeing the equivalent of a waterboarding session as my ear hissed and sputtered like something doused in battery acid.

Although I boast my share of problems, cranking the television to window shattering decibels, or screaming like a loon at the dinner table, three inches from my wife’s face over the course of normal conversation, aren’t on that list. And noting a distinct positive, I’ve learned to appreciate (read: love) the scent of my own earwax. There’s nothing quite like bringing a stained pinky to one’s nostril and having that punchy aroma overwork the endorphins. Wax is the new cologne, dear reader, tweaking my senses like a sharp swallow of absinthe. While I no longer debase the pages of books with blotchy orange fingerprints, purposely marking my insignia, that brief romance with perceived hearing loss is forever regarded as my first love. Debrox, I hardly knew ya, yet I was your bitch for countless weeks in the early 1980’s. Thank you for making me feel less "special."