“And as I looked in the mirror, I saw that my left ear was about 3 inches higher than my right ear.”
This is not a normal comment usually heard anywhere, but specifically, not in a fancy concert center right before the showing of “Rent”.
The conversation itself started innocently enough. I sat with my girlfriend in the comfortable seats, ready to enjoy a Broadway show. The lights were still shining, signaling there was time to chat before the true entertainment began. Little did I know that all the entertainment I ever could ask for was sitting right behind me.
“So, how are you doing these days?” Polite Lady (PL) asks sweetly.
“Oh, you know, I am doing well….” Slightly Weird Female (SWF) responds with a soft sigh.
“That’s nice. What have you been up to?” PL prods.
“Well, not much. You know I don’t work – the government pays me because of my disability.”
An uncomfortable silence ensues.
One one thousand….two one thousand….THREE one thousand….
Oh God, I think to myself, is PL going to say something? I can’t stand the awkward interlude….
But PL swoops in at the last moment before I turn around and break the fingers-down-the-chalkboard-cringe fest :
“Oh? So…..what…ummm….” PL succinctly inquires.
“My father forgot to put up the baby gate at the top of the stairs when I was less than a year old, so I fell down and damaged my head!” SWF exuberantly confides.
At this point, I really do feel for PL – she’s doing all she can to work with SWF, to have an easy five minute chat, to be politically correct and sweet and nice and refrain from that damn awkward silence that I myself have already felt ten-fold. But PL pushes on:
“Oh my! You poor thing! What happened after that?”
A little giggle escapes SWF. I SO want to turn around at this point, to get a visual on these two characters that I have been secretly listening to for the last few moments….but I am strong, and I stare straight forward, seeing nothing, and imagining the two women to my back, letting my creative mind fill in the spaces of the void of reality.
“After I tumbled down the stairs, I had to have brain surgery,” SWF says easily.
This woman holds nothing back.
“And when they went in to my head, they found a tumor. It was big. They took part of it out and that helped,” she shared just as easily, as if a tumor was something everyone talked about on a day to day basis, no big deal, a little ‘small talk’.
“Wow.”
That’s all PL can say at this point.
“Yeah, so after the surgery, I began having seizures….and they happen whenever and wherever, so that’s why I really can’t work, because, you know….issues with employers,” SWF quips. “But, I get by. I am ok. I am happy…” she shares. She seems …..content…
I begin to like this girl. Her life seems like a sad one….a bad childhood with a horrible father who can’t figure out how to baby-proof the house, a surgery gone wrong.
And then she says this: “My ear is 3 inches above my other one…”
What the hell? Really? 3 inches? That’s a damn significant amount of length….again, I am tempted to turn around.
But, I chose to not give in to temptation. I let the woman rest in her weird peace, and luckily, right at that moment, the lights dimmed, and the show – the show I actually PAID for, began.
Thank God.
