Just now my television
nearly gives me heart failure.
I come home from work,
frazzled as usual after a crazy day of trying to get everything done. I have correcting to do, I’m teaching on my
feet every single class today without any down-time, then I head right to a
team meeting and into organizing stuff from the team meeting to create a bunch
of master files … and on and on. In
other words, it’s another day full of minutiae, trying desperately to get
everything accomplished and not actually accomplishing a damn thing.
I have a few errands to
run after work, including getting gas at the station where my favorite guys
work. I have my driver’s side window
down, and the biting wind is slapping me upside of my head like I’m a petulant
child in need of sense-whacking.
“Another day in Paradise?”
Sam asks me from the open bay in the garage.
“Yup,” I shiver through
clenched teeth, “just like every other day.”
By the time I reach the
house, I’m chilled straight through all over again. I put away things that need to be put away,
grab some money for dinner and trivia later, and turn on the television. Maybe something decent is on like NCIS repeats or Income Property or Say Yes to
the Dress or a decent Hallmark movie.
The station that comes up
has a commercial, a guy in a white lab coat pretending to be a doctor. His mouth is moving, but there is no
sound. I rapidly hit the mute button,
assuming I had left the TV muted the last time I had it on, which I know isn’t
true since I was listening to and watching the news on NECN this morning. I hit the button again, and still, the
make-believe doctor makes not a sound.
I go instantly into panic
mode. I’ve had Bell’s Palsy, and the
doctor told me it may have been initiated by my winter “roll the window down
while driving” habit. The onset of the
condition was a dull ache in my inner ear and some hearing issues.
I was just at the gas station with the window wide open in this frigid air, and now my ears are broken!
I was just at the gas station with the window wide open in this frigid air, and now my ears are broken!
I glance back at the
television and watch the doctor silently babbling at me. The moment his mouth stops moving, though, he
says clearly, “Are you having trouble with your hearing?”
Shit. How does
he know? How could he know?
His mouth moves again, but
nothing comes out.
Oh my God, I’m hallucinating. I’ve gone deaf, and I’m hallucinating that
the man on the television has diagnosed me vicariously via cablevision.
Again, his mouth ceases,
but the voice-over goes on to tell me about some new product to prevent hearing
loss. Suddenly his mouth twitches and
opens and shuts and smirks and pouts, but it isn’t synchronized with the words
on the screen. It dawns on me … slowly (cut
me some slack; it has been a stressful day) … that the commercial’s sound track
is not quite on cue with the visual presentation.
At this point, I shut off
the TV. I don’t need any more stress in
my day, and there’s nowhere else to go but downhill from here. When the television soundtrack gives me a
near-heart attack, I know it’s time to admit defeat.
