10.30.2025

There are certain songs by certain bands I will leave a place or plug my ears with wax like the sailors in the Odyssey to avoid. Please do not play Wheezer around me, and if you're a grocery store manager you should post warning signs at the entrance if your music service includes Counting Crows. A girlfriend once asked me if I'd rather be blind or deaf and I didn't have to think about my answer. I've been half deaf about half my life anyway and you figure things out. Grew up with a deaf uncle and all of us knew a little ASL, could operate the TTY extension on the telephone before email and chat were everywhere. That and I've gotten pretty accustomed to using my eyes and I usually have a song from my Critical Period playing on loop in my skull whether I want it to or not, like I have headphones on, clear and persistent even if there's a loud protest going on around me or I'm camped out next to a jet engine. Sometimes I can force a song I actually like in there but after the thirtieth playthrough it's not much better than a smoke alarm battery chirping somewhere in the house. Also my memory for a lot of those songs is incomplete, or I'll find out I misheard the lyrics thirty years ago and never knew what the hell they were saying anyway, so it's usually just a line or two or a hook and part of the chorus before it repeats. It's like having these guys playing in the same room only all the time:

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