Watermelons and Sudden Hearing Loss
It’s just an old game I suppose—something you play during the early stages of dating in order to avoid the threat of any serious conversation.
“If you were to permanently lose one of your senses,” it’s been known to begin, “which of them would it be?”
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I once attended a watermelon bust of sorts. It involved firearms. In the ensuing chaos, which can only be described as redneck, I nearly lost my head. At the time, I wasn’t sure whether I had, in fact, escaped entirely unscathed. The concussion of the blast alone was painful enough to leave me checking my ears for blood, but pinky-fingers returned again as welcomely pink as ever.
Thankfully, I had not perforated my eardrums. I had, however, lost all hearing in my right ear. Not new to the upper exponential curve of sound pressure, I thought little of it and simply awaited the ringing that would preface the slow return of my hearing.
Days past, however; and I was as deaf as ever. I felt out-of-balance. It was exceptionally difficult to judge sounds’ points of origin. I grew tired of asking people to repeat themselves, and simply smiled and nodded rather often instead. Familiar music sounded foreign and discomforting.
I recall awakening one morning with a start. Fear had gotten hold of me. It was a goal of mine then to some day become a capable translator, but I knew in my quickly beating heart that that dream would now never materialize.
I researched sudden hearing loss on the Internet and was upset by what I read. Almost a week to the day, however, I began to hear, very faintly at first, that steady, welcome tone of forgiveness, and promised my ears to be kinder to them in the future.
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Take my sight, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
-mixtape
Tags: Watermelons, Sudden, Hearing, Loss
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