Can you hear that? It's a huge sigh of relief. And a lesson.

Remember when I was freaking out and totally thinking I might be partially losing my hearing. Well, I'm not. No more than the next guy/gal at least.

Apparently the true culprit was a frayed inner headphone wire connecting to the right earbud.

Whew!

This does not get me off the hook though. I've still got to watch my ears and I'll be the first to admit that they really should be in worse shape after so many years of working in loud rock clubs, listening to bajillions of albums on a variety of headphones carrying the sound from an assortment of sources. Plus, add in this chilling recent discovery.

I was at my mom's a few weeks ago, checking in on her and enjoying some chocolate chip cookies, when during a moment of quiet she suddenly started going, "Deedle-deedle-deedle-deedle."

"What was that all about?" I asked.

"That’s the noise I hear." She said. "It's the tinnitus."

WHAT?!

I discovered she's had tinnitus for years, but just never thought to tell me. She never thought to tell her number one son who has spent the majority of his years with his own precious little ears jammed up against speaker cabinets or spinning above thrumping subs. She never thought to share this info with the one son that was probably in the greatest danger of plunging himself (dumb-ass that he is) into some sort of hearing related disability.

After I thought about it I think I figured out why I was only just learning about her tinnitus. For starters I was probably rarely around when it started to creep in on her. By the time it had fully manifested itself, its constant presence had probably grown into such a background-type hum that it just seemed so ordinary that it didn't merit new attention.

Or maybe she just never told me because she assumed I wouldn't take it as a warning or learn anything from the revelation. I mean, my dad died from esophageal cancer yet I still smoke and drink (although I do take my stomach medicine to keep those pesky acids from doing the warm they did my dad) so one wouldn't think I would learn from another's example.

And she is/was probably right. I'm infamous for having to fuck things up by myself before I figure out the lesson contained within a given situation. There's a reason I have repeated this mantra from time immemorial:

It's easy to give good advice if you have a little perspective. It's really hard to follow good advice, though.

At one point I took a certain amount of pride out of such self-determination¹ but as the years fall behind me I'm beginning to see that I could have made portions of my path a lot easier if I had just listened and heeded instead of posturing and falling. The upswing is that I've never really had anyone to blame for my missteps other than myself.

The downside is, if I had followed other people's advice when it was wisely offered, I might have been able to avoid some of those missteps completely.²


¹Read: stubborn wind-bag
²Wow, I'll be the first to admit that this took quite a weird turn. At the start I was just going to say, "Yay, I'm not going deaf!" but I'm guessing subliminally there was a lot more going on than even I was aware of until fingers hit keys and just kept going and going and going even after I thought I was done with this morning's piece. I kind of like when that happens. It's almost like, there's this fence that I'm aware of and every once in a while I get a clearer peek at the foreign territory contained within its boundaries.