Symphony in a Waterfall

At some point in the last few days both of my ears became completely blocked. If this has ever happened to you, you'll know that it feels like you are hearing everything from underwater. This has happened twice before, but never both ears at once. How does it happen? Do I stick my fingers in my ears?

The first time my ear blocked up I went to the doctor. It took two visits - first to get a prescription for eardrops to loosen the wax, then a second to go back and get it syringed. Well, these days I like to do things for myself as much as possible - I've been cutting my own hair for years, so surely I can flush my own ears.

Yesterday I went to the pharmacy and picked up a bottle of eardrops and an ear syringe. The ear syringe doesn't look like a regular syringe, it's a rubber ball with a nozzle sticking out. It looks like a big golf ball sitting on a big golf tee. You squeeze the ball underwater, release it, and it sucks up the water. I couldn't wait to use it, and not just because I could no longer stand the feeling of hearing everything from underwater.

I don't know why I waited until today to begin, maybe because yesterday my ears were ninety nine per cent blocked, but today they were one hundred per cent blocked.

Anyway, I woke up and began the process. Five or six drops in the ear, walk back to the bed with my head tilted on its side, lie down, read my book for thirty minutes, then back to the bathroom to syringe the ear. I kept sucking up water and squirting it in there. Nothing seemed to be happening. I was still underwater. I went back to the drops, another thirty minutes and tried again. Hey, something came out! It's small, but it's something! One more time with the drops and the rubber ball syringe did the trick, blasting away in there and suddenly something popped, sound came rushing into my ear, a great big beautiful blast of high frequency sounds that I had forgotten existed. I felt triumphant, but confused too. What is that sound? It sounds like somebody rustling cellophane right up against my ear! I looked down and it was the sound of my fingernails scratching my skin.

I repeated the process for my other ear and blasted the second wax plug out. Let me tell you, these wax plugs were huge, they were like wine corks. I'm popping wine corks out of my ears. Some party trick!

And the sounds, those glorious high frequency sounds. They were brand new. I couldn't remember ever hearing so clearly. I said words aloud, every *s* sounded like I had a massive lisp, lisping with a megaphone in my small room.

And then I had to piss. I started pissing and it was musical, it was a symphony in a waterfall.