This started with my nose. A year ago, I visited an ear-nose-and-throat doctor because my tonsil looked weird.
Wait. I just realized the story started with my tonsil, but my nose took credit. Let’s start over. Here’s the conversation between the doctor and me.
Doctor: Your tonsil is fine. You probably had a tonsil stone, which is harmless. But it’s gone. If I take out your tonsils, you’ll have no more stones. But the pain level with a tonsillectomy is second only to childbirth and presidential campaigns.
Me: I’ve lived through both childbirth and presidential campaigns. I don’t want to do either one again. Let’s leave the tonsils alone.
Doctor: Got it. Let me check your nose because it’s connected to your tonsils.
She numbed my nose and stuck a camera up there. Found “polyps.” Polyp is Latin for a little thing that shows up where it doesn’t belong. Doctors like to remove polyps or shrink them. If you don’t deal with polyps, they grow and become something unpleasant like a presidential debate, and we all know how that went.
The doctor prescribed shots to shrink the polyps. The drug is called Dupixent, and it also works on something in my esophagus because I’m 56, and every week I find something else that’s not working in my body. My husband gives me an injection in my belly every other Friday. His work is in finance, but a nurse showed him how to stick me. I’ve been on the shots for a year, so the doctor wanted to see my nose again. She said the polyps are better, but the presidential candidates are worse.
Me: Can you do anything about the candidates? If you give them an injection, will they shrink like the polyps? Surely there’s something in the Constitution about a minimum size for the president? Ant-sized men don’t show up well on camera or something like that?
Doctor: I can do nothing about the candidates.
Me: Pity. Can you check my hearing? I keep asking my husband and kids to repeat themselves.
The doctor sent me to an audiologist for a hearing test. The audiologist put me in a little room with glass walls. I shared the room with a monkey, a sheep, and a cat. I had to wear a blindfold and differentiate between the animals as they wandered around the sound booth and said, “Baa, bleat, meow, monkey sound.” (I’ve heard monkeys in a zoo, but I have no idea how to write that sound in English.)
Okay, there was not a real monkey in the booth with me. And no cats or sheep. But little toy animals sat in three corners of the room. The audiologist used them to test children.
The audiologist placed earphones on me and left the booth to sit at her computer.
I listened to a recording of a woman talking over background noise. One man in the background said the word sepulcher. Now that’s not a word you hear every day. I think it’s a color. Wait, no, that’s ochre, an orangey yellow. A sepulcher is a tomb, which reminds me of the day a few weeks ago when my sisters and my niece and I cleaned my dad’s tombstone. We used toothbrushes and Dawn dishwashing liquid because Dawn cleans everything from tombstones to ducklings. But not cats. Don’t give a cat a bath because they have claws and teeth and strong opinions about contact with water.
Speaking of cats, my cat wants me to mention that he’s done with presidential campaigns, especially with violence. He says every minute spent on violence against humans is a minute not spent tending to the needs of a cat. I said, “Of the arguments against violence, that’s a good one, but I’ve heard better ones.” He stared at me.
What happens if you put soap on a monkey or a sheep? My guess is the monkey will grab the soap and play with it, and the sheep will demand a shampoo and a scratch behind the ears.
The woman in my earphones said phrases I had to repeat. She said, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.” Just kidding! That’s a typing test, not a hearing test. It uses all the letters of the alphabet.
(I’ll wait a minute because five of you are checking to see if that sentence uses all the letters.)
(I’ll hum like Winnie-the-Pooh while I wait.)
(Humm, hum de-dum. Didn’t Pooh hum in one of the stories? The one about the bees? Or was it a cat, or a sheep, or maybe a monkey and a Man in a Yellow Hat? No, that was Curious George, wasn’t it?)
The woman in my headphones said, “Pour the hot ashes onto the carpet.”
Now why would she say that?
If you cook over a fire, you end up with hot ashes. But who in their right mind pours ashes on a carpet? And HOT ashes at that? Why would she say such a thing and distract the hearing test patient?
I asked the monkey in the corner. She agreed that pouring hot ashes on a carpet was foolish.
I passed the hearing test with flying colors. My hearing was not perfect, but it was “normal.” I do not need hearing aids.
That’s more than I can say for our presidential candidates. They are both of a certain age. There’s no shame in hearing aids, of course. But if we’re talking about shame and our two potential candidates, well. How much time do you have?
Has anyone asked a monkey or sheep or cat if they want to run for president? We are in dire straits.
If we’re stuck with the candidates who showed up for the debate, let’s all get tonsillectomies instead of having an election. It would be less painful.
“Hear, hear!” said the monkey.