the ceaseless torture of adulthood

"When I slam the garage door down on my right toe, it is the left lobe that activates the screaming mechanisms. When I poke the B-B-Q fork into my left thigh, it is the right lobe that signals the agony euphemizer. And when I throw the running chainsaw at a buddy for a joke, the whole brain comes into play controlling the pointing and laughing muscles....The left side tells left from right. The right side tells right from wrong."
~ dr. popeye

"We don't know what's wrong with that ear, but she either can't hear anything out of it or she's faking. Maybe we'll turn her upside down and shake her to find out"
~ mrs. hilliard, grade school nurse

A while back I heard on National Public Radio that if you're deaf in one ear, important signals from that ear never reach the side of your brain for which that ear primarily gathers data.

Say, for example, you're deaf in your right ear. The right ear is supposed to feed a bunch of Very Important Data to the left side of your brain. You know, the side of the brain that programs in C++ and does your taxes. But because you're deaf in that ear, that information never goes over there! The left side of your brain sits around waiting for some Important Information to analyze, which it never receives. After while it gets bored. "Well, they've forgotten me again," it figures, so it fantasizes about diesel engine repair manuals instead.

It's just so sad.

But that's not the end of it. While your right ear sits there like a telephone waiting to ring in a Janis Ian song, your left ear is happily collecting all that auditory information and doing whatever it likes with it. The left ear primarily sends signals to the right side of your brain. That side that's given you the reputation over time of being a little...odd. You know, the side of the brain that makes up cat songs.

Oh... My... Cat's name is Butros Butros Butros! Butros Butros Butros Butros Butros! Butros Butros Butros Butros Butros Butros Butros!

But we call him Butros Butros for short!

So there you are in 12th-grade trigonometry class. Mr. Spacek has his Escher necktie flamboyantly flung over his left shoulder. He sketches dramatic circles and lines all over the dusty chalk board with pink and green chalks. He is explaining the life-and-death importance of transversals intersecting x and y axes.

But what you hear is transvestite insects inspecting Mexican pastures. You take Mr. Kalanowski on his word.

What, one wonders, would transvestite insects wear for the occasion of inspecting Mexican pastures? Rotund dung beetles in ladybug togs, and praying mantises swathed in raw silk Luna Moth outfits with matching blue-green sombreros dangling little fringe balls all around. Kissably lipsticked woollybears! Speaking of which, the Wooly Wooly said something interesting in the pantry this morning. I recall it was "Macaroons." There's Tom Wilco sketching another highly detailed BONER on the desk diagonally up to the right. The left side of your brain calculates the angle degree the appendage represents relative to the implied horizontal plane. Somebody bounces a slightly flabby basketball up the hallway outside the classroom. Meanwhile, Dawn Voss in the seat behind you has been whispering in your right ear for the last two minutes and you've been mercifully unaware until you realize that she is spraying spittle into your ear canal.