quare ego sum non deaf

I've got another scar to show off.

This is the one I'm fairly self-conscious about. You see, most people will never notice it. Yet, on the rare occasions that people have asked me about it, I generally get kind of freaked out.

For a while, this scar represented something of a weakness to me. So, while I've done nothing to hide it, I've never really wanted people to notice it.



This scar is behind my right ear.

As I've mentioned before, I had a surgery to correct a defect in my ear when I was five. My mother, grandmother, and I flew out to Los Angeles to have the 5 hour procedure done. It's one of the few things I remember from that age.

We stayed for a few nights at my uncle's house. I remember the small things, like playing possum on the floor and hearing my aunt and mom discuss the fact that they thought I was still asleep and would let me be. I don't remember the exact reason why I didn't want to get out of bed, but it seemed incredibly appropriate at the time. I remember my uncle's house as it was then. I remember it so well that I was a bit taken aback this summer when I took a trip out to Los Angeles to help out my grandparents. I went to visit my uncle and aunt and they have done quite a bit of remodelling in the past 15 years.

But, that's a rabbit trail. I remember going to the hospital the day before the surgery. My grandmother and I wandered through the gift shop. I saw this little white stuffed dog with a light blue shirt on it. I loved stuffed animals at the time and made it pretty obvious that I wanted that little dog.

The next day, they wheeled me into surgery. They put me to sleep and got to work. I woke up in the middle of the surgery, screaming for my mother. One of the men in the E.R. told me that I needed to be quiet and get back to sleep.

"If you go back to sleep right now, you can have all the ice cream you want when you wake up." He said. (For the record, he was a liar. I had one tiny cup of sherbet while I was in the hospital.) Naturally, I did everything I could to go back to sleep.

When I woke up, I had a cast wrapped around my head and my right ear. There were two stuffed animals at the end of my bed. One was a stuffed rabbit named Pepper and the other was the dog from the gift shop. My grandmother had bought it for me, such a thoughful woman. Both animals had identical casts wrapped around their heads. It was comforting, somehow.

Now, why would I view that as a weakness? This post has gone on too long. I'll continue this tomorrow...

P.S. - The X-prize expo was the bomb. Robert will be posting on it. You should check it out.
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Daily Ditty:
Jimmy Eat World - Night Drive