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Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Whoa...whoa!

Editor's note: I meant to have this post published on Monday this week and move the Q & A #14 post to next week, but I just plain forgot. Simple as that.

My family and I went to a local Halloween parade on Saturday, just few blocks down from our house. That, in and of itself, is nothing ordinary...except for a certain vehicle.

As you probably know from experience, towns always showcase their public services. Firemen, policemen, and emergency personnel would come out for the parades. They always strolled by in their vehicles. It's always nice to see seized cars turned into cop cars, ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks as they go by. Nothing extraordinary about that...til that Saturday.

I was about 10 feet from the front of a fire truck, my right ear facing it when it blasted its siren horn. Whoa, whoa...the sound reverberated in my left ear and I physically reacted to that by ducking a little and bringing up my left hand to cover my left ear.

Something strange happened - I experienced a little dizziness. I rarely hear anything, let alone this humongous sound bouncing around and rattling my brain like crazy. I glanced at my wife and a neighbor. They were cracking up hard by the fact that I heard it. HEARD it. All I could do was grin at them.

Jeez!

Another fire truck went by and blasted its siren horn again, but I did not hear it this time. I was almost dead middle of the truck and the neighbor did the crossed eye roll from the noise invasion on her ears. This time, I cracked up at her. Turnabout is a fair play. LOL

I am sure you have noticed that I heard the blast in my left ear only. My left ear picks up sharp & high pitch noises while my right ear picks up soft and low pitch noises. No, I wasn't wearing any hearing aid - I haven't in decades. Just a weird quirk of how my ears work...not at all in tandem.

6 comments:

A Daft Scots Lass said...

WOW! That can only mean good news, right?

Copyboy said...

That is really odd that the first truck effected you like that. And how both ears tend to not agree sound-wise. So were you happy when you heard the noise? Had you heard anything like that in the past? Or was this the first time?
Love your blog man!

DCHY said...

A Daft Scots Lass - my ears do work...just not often at all. ;) The dizzy spell was from sudden overload of the hearing sense...akin to you watching a movie in a darkened classroom and then the teacher flips the lights on.

Copyboy - thanks for your praise. I reacted because I had been to parades and that had never bothered me before. It was a sudden and new experience. I was definitely not ready for that. LOL

Becky Andrews said...

Okay that sounds like a really intense experience! That helps to understand where the dizzy spell came from, too. Wow.

nitebyrd said...

It sounds like what happens sometimes with stereo sound, well, to me anyway. I'll hear some of the music on one side better than the other or at a different level. It's disconcerting to be sure. A fire engine blast definitely could overload your brain!

DCHY said...

Becky - yes, glad you understood. This was not something I experience often.

Nitebyrd - it "sounds" like a normal process. Nobody figured out that my ears do not work in tandem until nearly 25 years of deafness. No wonder why I didn't always hear things in the other ear during audio tests...