Prince | Peggy Jaeger, Author

A little disclaimer. I go to the gym 5-6 times per week. Sometimes I just walk on the treadmill and watch mindless television shows on my iPad for an hour, racking up my steps on my FitBit Charger HR. Others, I work out with machines and weights and then speed walk on the treadmill to fast rock music. I tell you this boring stuff so you have a head’s up about what’s to come next (!)

The other day was a weight/machines/fast walk day. I was just finishing up the cool down on the treadmill, getting my heart rate back to a normal, non-galloping rate, and enjoying Prince’s WHEN DOVES CRY as my cool down song. I’d put a link here to it on you-tube, but because of proprietary laws, his estate has removed them.

Anyway.

I finished, pressed my Fitbit to stop recording my timed workout, then shut off my iPod and yanked my earbuds out of my ears. Here’s where the day turned-almost-to a disaster.

Apparently, I yanked so hard I caused a suction buildup between my inner ear and my earbud. This is what it looked like:

Notice there is a white safety piece on one side and not the other. Where was that piece, you ask? Well, I think you can guess. Yup. Still stuck in my ear.

I tried to pull it out but it was lodged so securely ( suction, remember) and I have little ears, that I couldn’t dislodge it with my fingers. The more I tried, the further into the canal it went. Funny thing? After about a minute of fiddling with trying to get it out, I couldn’t hear as well. I’m deaf in my left ear due to a childhood accident and the piece was lodged in my right ear. Yeah. Not a good situation.

What to do? I mean, my options were to continue to try and remove it with my fingers, but that was proving impossible, take myself to the ER where I’d be charged a gazillion dollars for a stupid visit, or try and garner some help. The last one was the one I was most worried about. I mean, really. Would you want to stick your fingers in a stranger’s ear? Ungloved?

I went out to the front desk at Planet Fitness and stated my plight. As I was disclosing my stupidity I had a thought, so I asked if they had an emergency kit. They did. I asked if there was the typical plastic tweezer included in it. There was. I asked if I could borrow that said tweezer and attempt to remove this hearing-impairing, pain in the a** piece of plastic. They said yes.

So. Armed with the tweezer – and it wasn’t your typical little metal one. NO, it was a big, honking, blue and ugly plastic thingie that was way larger than my ear canal opening – I went back into the changing room and attempted to get the stupid thing out. Not easy. Not by a long shot. I couldn’t see what I was doing because they only have regular, stationary mirrors, and not makeup mirrors you can move around. I stuck the giant tweezer into my ear – blindly – and tried to grasp the edge so I could get it out. After a minute or so ( seemed like an hour!) I started to sweat because this wasn’t easy. I am not coordinated on the best of days and this was certainly the kind of procedure that required someone with three eyes. Or two people.

But.

After a few minutes, success. I pulled the offending piece of s**t out and tossed it in the garbage. Then I washed the tweezers and returned them to the front desk. I offered to pay for replacement ones because they’d just saved me about $ 1000.00 in ER fees and how much could the plastic ones be, anyway? About 2 bucks, tops? But they were so gracious and told me since they were plastic, I didn’t need to. They’d see to getting a new pair for the emergency kit.

Moral of this story- Oh, my God, there are sosososo many. But the main one is this: be careful of the types of devices you put anywhere in your body. Something even as innocuous as an ear bud piece can cause problems. Now I have the official iPhone earbuds for when I listen to music:

Notice how they have no plastic coverings. I clean them every day after use with peroxide and water on a cotton ball.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness and safety.

‘Nuff said about my ears.

When I’m not getting into trouble at the gym you can typically find me here: Tweet Me//Read Me// Visit Me//Picture Me//Pin Me//Friend Me//Google+Me//

I don’t do reflections. Not normally, anyway.

I’m the person who could care less about my Ancestry.com findings; the one who doesn’t subscribe to Classmates.com even when they email me that “someone wants to reconnect with you.” If I wanted to stay in touch with the people I went to High School with ( the admittedly WORST 4 years of my life) I would have done so without the help of Facebook or any other nosy Internet company. I don’t like looking at old yearbooks ( especially my own) and I never watch Oprah’s Where Are They Now series.

I’m just not into all that. I’m the type of person who likes to look FORWARD, not reminisce on the past. If you need a reason why I’m so bitchy about this, just look at 2016 for an answer and a little insight into why I feel this way.

We lost TRUE HEROS like Mohammad Ali and John Glenn and ElieWiesle

We lost MUSICAL ICONS like Prince, George Michael, David Bowie and Leonard Cohen

We lost BRILLIANT ACTORS/ACTRESSES like Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, Florence Henderson, Robert Vaughn, Carrie Fisher and a day later her mother, Debbie Reynolds.

We lost LITERARY ICONS Harper Lee and Richard Adams

Because of INSANE HATRED we lost 49 LOVED and CHERISHED Mothers, Brothers, Sisters, Aunts, Uncles and Fathers in a horrific nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida

We suffered through terror bombings in Brussels, Nice, Turkey, Korea, Germany. Political scandals in almost every country. Olympic scandals from athletes doping to one American swimmer acting like a dope!