Notes on Stupid, Including My Own, Part 3

I might be related.

Yeah, so, here we are again. Another round of things I've done that I've regretted doing.

We all do stupid things, but I always assume that my things are stupider than everyone else's stupid things. I can't imagine my co-workers having suffering as many lapses in judgment as I have. Then again, when I watch COPS, which as you I know I do as often as I can, I realize how stupid people can really be.

Because when a guy is pulled over in a stolen car containing several packets of meth, you know that this isn't the first time this has happened, nor it will be his last. This proves a point that I've been making for some time: If you want to feel better about yourself, watch COPS.

Then again (yet again), it's kind of sad that I have to compare myself with drug-addled car thieves. But hell, you take what you can get. So, here we go!

I'm doing you a favor by showing this kind of ear.

INCIDENT: Sticking something so deep into my ear that I needed to go to the doctor or hospital.

REASON: I am a moron. More so because it's happened more than once.

YEAR/AGE: A couple of times during my late 20s.

DETAILS: Sigh...details? I have a habit of scratching the inside of my ear with the thin end of a pen cap, because my ears are sensitive and I like the feeling. Sometimes I slip.

The first time this happened it was not long after I married (I use this fact as a gauge in terms of time, not as some sort of correlation). I was working at yet another job that initially had promise but which I grew bored of after about three weeks, and I performing some soul-sucking task or checking e-mail or something while absentminded poking around my ear canal, and I immediately knew I messed something up, because my ear was hurting for a the rest of the day.

I assumed that the discomfort would eventually go away but the ear said fat chance, dummy by waking me up at 3 in the morning with what I believe was the most horrible constant pain I'd ever had in my life. (Yes, I'd already mentioned that grabbing a hell-hot frying pan handle was the worst pain I'd ever experienced, but upon further review, I'd say comparing both pains is like comparing apples to quince. There's something to be said about burning a sensitive part of an extremity like the webbing of your thumb, but something else to be said about infecting a piece of your body that is extremely close to your brain. The "somethings" to be said contain a high proportion of profanity.)

Somehow I drove to the hospital without ending up in a ditch. The only way I can describe an earache like that is to assume it's like childbirth. Childbirth through the ear.

The second time I infected my ear this way, I went to see my doctor. The nurse practicioner was on duty, which wasn't a bad thing because

1. She's very capable
2. She's kinda hot

The conflict, despite her skills and hotness, was when she'd decided to clear out my ear with a device called an ear syringe and which resembles one of those old-school pesticide dispensers. This is what it looks like:

Dr. Mengele will see you now.

Imagine a concentrated force of water blasting into your ear canal like someone was trying to pressure-wash your cochlea. If your ear wasn't hurting, you would merely feel your eyes rolling around in your head like you were Cookie Monster; I know this because I've had this weapon employed against me one time when my ears were only clogged. When you have an ear that's so badly infected that it hurts from the air of a gnat gnashing its teeth 50 feet away, it feels like a flamethrower.

Not only did I swear like a sailor when Navy is losing to Army by seven touchdowns, but it was the closest I'd come to being taken over by the visceral thoughts compelling me to punch anything within fist's length.

*    *     *

Which is the setting for "clean the damn clothes"?

INCIDENT: Throwing an item into the wash that I should not have thrown into the wash.

REASON: Haste, and not thinking.

YEAR/AGE: Junior year of college.

DETAILS: While growing up, there were certain chores my brother and I were obliged to perform, like mowing the lawn. But there were a few things that Brother and I were actually told not to do, and one of them was the laundry.

Mother had her own particular code about things, like we could go out for any sport except football (considering my size, that was never a problem), and we could play any instrument except drums (she felt that drums was too noisy of an activity and probably regretted green-lighting my trombone lessons).

From an early age we were told to stay the hell away from the washing machine. There had been a history of problems with one of the washers, and Brother and I had a habit of breaking things, so we stayed the hell away, even when the washer was replaced. Brother eventually rebelled by doing his own laundry, because he was seeing girls and seemed to go through several outfits a day, though occasionally he'd enrage my parents by using a whole load of water and dryer cycle for like a single shirt.

But as we will learn in this blog, I was more of the rule-follower, even to my own peril. I didn't know how to use a washer when I went to college, and I soon learned that a washing machine is rather intuitive, even though looking at a dial, with all the settings can be as intimidating as trying to decipher the parking signs on any New York City street.

Before...

By the time I was a junior, I was living off campus in a house with Brother (we both attended the same university) and a couple of other guys, but Mrs. The Anthony Show, who was just Girlfriend Of The Anthony Show back then, was spending a lot of time with me. We were in the basement of my house, and we were getting ready to go to some campus concert that had like five bands, three of which I'd never heard of but two of those I wouldn't have known any songs from, but when you're in college you've got all this free time at least I did and thinking back maybe I should've been doing more practical things to set up my future but oh well back to the story.

We were getting ready to go to this outdoor concert thingy, but I told Girlfriend that I wanted to do a load of laundry first. By this time I was smart enough to separate my colors, and I had a load of whites that I decided to wash on hot and with bleach. At the very last moment — I think the washer had already filled with water and began its cycle — I was like, Hey, there's room for one more thing! So I tossed One More Thing into the washer.

...after.

That One More Thing was a shirt I wore as a jersey for my intramural soccer team, the kind of shirt you buy at a store that you pay extra to have a number and a name added. It was a heavy cotton shirt, and it was red. The kind of red shirt that if you sweat a lot, your chest would look sunburned. The kind of red shirt you shouldn't throw into a washing machine full of hot water and white garments.

We were all set to head out to the festival; I figured I'd toss the clothes into the dryer before walking out the door. To my horror, everything in the washer was pink. Not pink like I threw a red shirt into the wash, but pink like the clothes were actually pink to begin with. The kind of pink that would require the Cat in the Hat to enlist more than just Cats A through Z, he'd have to call up Cats Alpha through Omega, as well as Cats Shin, Resh, and Qof to clean up the mess.

Because I was in college, this was my entire wardrobe of white things, including all my tighty-whitey (now tighty-pinky) briefs, and I didn't have the funds to buy all-new stuff. So, I spent the next several hours soaking all the clothes in a bleach solution and then running them through the wash again and again until they started to fade. We missed the festival, naturally.

I didn't even bother to dry the red shirt. I tossed it over a chair, the rear of the shirt facing me. The jersey number was 5. The 5 looked like an open mouth, mocking me.

ANY LESSONS LEARNT?
Um, sort of. I try to be more careful when I wash my clothes -- I almost never use hot, except when vomit or urine is involved on an item that I'm too cheap to just throw away -- but I haven't stopped sticking things in my ears.

I ought to keep a batch of amoxicillin handy for my next screw-up. Should be any day now.