early fighting and deafness

so i've been trying to get to sleep for about the past hour or so to no avail. this, of course, means that i've been lying in bed trying to exhaust my brain into slumber by thinking and trying to remember stuff, which i know is extremely counterproductive (especially since here i am now writing about it).

anyway. i was trying figure out what motley crue song it was that caused my partial deafness. for those of you who don't know, i'm partially deaf (read: mostly deaf, probably close to 75 percent) in my left ear.

let's look back on "the incident" (although it was more accident than incident, but doesn't incident just sound better?). i was about 4 or 5 years old, sharing a room with my brother who's 11 years older then me (which put him right into the key demo for motley crue back in the early to mid-'80s). as i remember (seeing as it's kind of a big moment in my life), my bro wanted me to listen to a song from the new crue tape he bought on the new earphones he had also bought to use with his walkman. (the earphones were what are now called earbuds [thanks to the ubiquitousness of iPods, since i don't ever remember hearing them called earbuds prior to iPodmania].)

i, of course, acquiesced to the crue listening, and let him insert the earbud in my left ear. little did we know that our mother was seeing this and didn't approve. and instead of walking in and asking what was going on in a calm, rational manner, she barged in and began screaming like a banshee (in spanish) at my brother, which surprised him enough to drop his walkman, which caused the volume to go the highest it could go. my mother (the "caring" woman that she is) continued to berate my brother while i stood there, with extremely loud music in my left ear, in shock.

fast forward several months. i had noticed something was off with my hearing, but i didn't say anything to my parents for fear of bringing up "the incident" of my bro letting me listen to *gasp* a hair band. and i didn't want to get yelled at, myself. i was in kindergarten.

so remember how back in elementary (and junior high, i think), you had yearly checkups where you go to the school nurse and she checks your hearing and sight and weight and if anything's wrong, they either call your parents or send you home with a note saying what's fucked up with you and that you should be taken to a doctor?

well (and here's where i get a little tangenty), the day before said checkup, when i was in kindergarten, i remember being in my classroom, coloring at a table, when the principal decided to pay a quick visit to my class. i glanced up, noticed him, then went back to coloring. pretty soon after that, this kid in my class bumped into me, causing me to lose my grip on the shoddy, blue half-crayon. it fell to the floor and rolled under the table. i went under the table to fetch it so i could continue my coloring. when i came back up with crayon in tow, the principal was gone, and my teacher was giving me an odd look. i just went back to coloring.

the next day was my checkup. as you can probably tell by now, "the incident" caused some hearing damage, which caused some concern at my checkup. enough so that it required a call home and not just being sent home with a note. i remember being in one room of the nurse's office, door closed, when i could see through the window to the main room that my mom was walking in with my teacher. they spoke with the nurse. it looked like my mother started screaming at the nurse. the nurse handed her a yellow slip of paper, which i assume was a referral to the clinic that she later took me to for a better, more professional hearing test.

then the door opened, my mother said "we're going home", and so we did. we lived right next door to my elementary school, so it was a short walk. on the walk home, my mother (again, showing her great parenting skills) told me "so your teacher told me how you hid under your table when the principal came into the room. what are you, a fraidy cat?" (note nothing is said about my hearing problems.) i, trying to clear up the matter, told my mother that i wasn't hiding, but that i was retrieving my crayon. my mother (again with her great parenting skills) called me a liar and said i was probably lying about my hearing loss, too. i told her i wasn't lying, that i didn't hid under the table, that i was getting my crayon that had fallen, and that i did have trouble hearing, to which she slapped me pretty hard and told me to not talk back to her like that or she'd hit me harder next time.

and this, i realize, is the first time i ever got into a fight with my parents and the first of many times that they accused me of lying about something concerning my health and well-being.

and for some reason, this surprises me, because i always thought i didn't really start fighting with my parents until i was at least in fifth or sixth grade. but nope. it was kindergarten. i was five. and they thought i was faking my hearing loss (which they continued to believe even after a doctor, not a school nurse, told them i needed a hearing aid. to this day, i still have never had a hearing aid, although i more than likely could benefit from one.).

but back to the hearing loss. to this day (and in fact this very minute), i still cannot recall what motley crue song caused my hearing loss. although i still do flinch everytime i hear vince neil sing.

lately i've been seriously considering going to a doctor to find out how bad my hearing has gotten over the years and possibly look into getting a hearing aid. but it also sort of freaks me out because i've lived essentially my whole life not knowing what it's like to, well, hear something the way everyone else does. and how people get bothered with how loud i listen to my music. i could live without the tinnitus, though.

anywho. so there are my stories about how i went partially deaf, the first fight i got into with my parents, and how i still am not sleepy. dang.