My Ears Hear Wrong

My ears hear wrong. It is a plain fact. There is no point in hiding it, trying to conceal it, or doing anything other than embrace it.

Really, ears do not hear at all, until chunks of plastic encase them and amplify sounds to a point where my eyes twitch and my head starts to throb. The sounds that assault my ears begin to take over my world and grasp me in a tight restraint. All of my senses succumb to my obscene auditory environment as I desperately try to distinguish the sounds I am hearing. The noise overwhelms me as I try to separate the overlapping sounds, to create something that my brain can process and identify.

Once I can establish one of the sounds from the group, I start to workout what it may be. The noises continue to smack me repetitively, threatening to rip the one sound I picked out away from me. I struggle to keep a grip on that one sound and figure out what it is. I begin to survey my visual environment - a difficult task given the constant attack on my auditory sense. I am not sure what this sound could be attached too. It is a constant sound with only slight intermittent pauses. It has a growling quality and I start searching for a cat, perhaps a dog. Then I remember that I am in a lecture hall and the probability of there being a cat or dog in a linguistics lecture is slim.

My eyes continue to dart around the room as I start to focus on my tactile sense. I am feeling lots of thing. The most obvious are the footsteps of the person walking in front of me. Through my notebook I can feel the vibrations of the voice of the man next to me. Neither of these match the sound.

Suddenly the sound disappears. As quickly as I was able to pick it out, it is gone. I try to dig it out of the mass of noise ambushing my cochlea. I cannot find it though. It is gone. I turn to my right and notice a student pick up her cell-phone a begin to speak. The sound was her phone ringing.