EARWAX BLOCKAGE

We’re about to get rullll intimate here at thomasmarkzuniga.com. I’ve spent nearly half a year and four Struggle Sundays with y’all, so I figure I can now discuss such details. Details I wouldn’t have dared discuss in month #3.

A couple days before I left for the east coast last month, I, uh, had a bit of a problem.

I couldn’t hear out of my right ear.

You see, I’d been cleaning out my ears with some q-tips, and boy was it crazy nasty. I’d not cleaned my ears in months, and I was scooping yellowy brown gunk out the wazoo.

Don’t worry, I’m also vomiting a little in my mouth and eyeballs as I tell this story.

Anyway, a funny thing happened after my ear-cleaning. And by funny I mean horrifying.

I’d gone to bed and was lying on my side, when I turned onto my back…and I couldn’t hear. Something plugged into my ear canal, and I couldn’t hear. I rushed to the bathroom and spent the wee hours of that morning trying to scoop out even more yellowy brown gunk, growing increasingly paranoid I’d dig too deep.

But nothing worked. I couldn’t freaking hear out of my right ear.

PANIC.

It was after 3am and I decided to drive to Walmart — blessed Walmart — and purchase some ear drops. Figured I needed to loosen up whatever remaining gunk was still inconceivably lodged in there.

I don’t know if you’ve ever sojourned to a Walmart in the dead of night. If not, you’re missing out on one of the most bizarre, memorable experiences of your life. I could write an entire post about bare shelves, mammoth crates of food strewn about the aisles, and countless customers doddling about in their pajamas.

I examined all my possibilities in ear care products and, not being an expert on ear care products, naturally settled on the cheapest option. Then I went to purchase my ear drops — and, oh, guess what?

The system was down.

None of the cash registers were operational. The manager informed me that when Walmart’s headquarters in Arkansas crashes, apparently all the other Walmarts in our universe crash too. Seriously? Is that real?

Holding a box of ear drops, I listened to this manager’s long story through the use of one and only one ear. As I waited the next 20 minutes for “the system” to return to life, I grew incredibly isolated and anxious.

I CAN’T HEAR OUT OF MY RIGHT EAR.

What if it wasn’t earwax clogging my ear canal, but a rogue piece of cotton? Or what if I’d punctured my ear drum and my ear was clogged with blood? What if I’d live the rest of my life with only one ear?

And then I saw him.

A man. A black man, sitting in a wheelchair by the optical inlet. His eyes were glazed white, and he was just sitting there. Alone. At 3am.

Unless he was really an X-Man and could easily detect the color underwear beneath my pajama bottoms, this man was blind. Blind and alone in a Walmart at 3am while “the system” was down.

I thought about my probably only temporarily “broken” ear and tried considering what this man must have experienced in 40, 50, 60 years. What he was going through at that exact moment.

I was freaking out over one ear.

What about people who can’t hear out of either?

People who can’t walk? Speak?

See?

When I returned to my apartment and administered the ear drops, I remained deaf in one ear and continued freaking out that entire next day as I set up a doctor’s appointment. Continued freaking out even more as I’d convinced myself that my ear was starting to hurt, when in retrospect, it wasn’t.

The doctor cleared out my wax-clogged ears with water jets I could feel behind my eyes, and now I can hear just fine. I can still walk, speak, and see too.

I remember that man in the wheelchair. Alone. Unseeing.

And I’m thankful for perspective.