Bell's Follies

a thousand miles seems pretty far
but they've got planes and trains and cars
I’d walk to you if I had no other way
our friends would all make fun of us
and we'll just laugh along because we know
that none of them have felt this way
delilah i can promise you
that by the time that we get through
the world will never ever be the same
and you’re to blame

Monday, February 23, 2004

"The Funny Version of Events"

As child I remember a soap opera where one of the leading men wore an eye patch. He was mysterious and wounded and the women loved him. This was a valuable lesson to me, because it helped convince me that this Bell’s Palsy thing came with certain fringe benefits. Soon, the ladies in my group would come to love a mysterious trainer who wore a pirate patch.

‘Was he wounded in some romantic war?’ they would imagine. 'Not a real war, mind you, but one of those noble, gallant wars from the novels.'

‘Did he lose his eye, perhaps, defending his love from marauding bandits?’ they would muse, wondering if the bandits themselves were also hot, as they so often all are in the films. 'Maybe he's the bandit. Ooooh!'

‘Or perhaps he removed his own eye, in a gesture of unrequited longing, like that painter, the French one. You know, the one they made that movie about. Didn’t Leonardo kiss some dude in that one? No, that was another one. A different painter, albeit a French one, too. Funny, I always figured Leo kissing another guy would be a lot hotter than it was. It goes to show,’ they would wonder in stream of consciousness, like in that long book by the Scottish dude. Odysseus, was it? I thought you said he was Scottish? Yes, yes, yes, oh yes, but no, Odysseus was Roman.

Well, they could just go on and keep wondering all these things, because I also had delusions of patchy hotness, and point of fact, the patch did look pretty cool except for one small thing. I wear glasses.

And eyeglasses over a patch is not mysterious, it's utterly transparent. Eyeglasses over a patch is not romantic, it’s quite mood-breaking. I looked like the ‘smart’ pirate. The one who kept the ship’s log and did all the accounting. The one who lost his eye in a fountain pen accident. There go my Bell’s benefits.

So instead of looking smartly mysterious, I chose not to wear the patch at all and instead conducted my next three days of training looking like Droopy Dog. And no girl thinks that’s hot. And I don’t want to meet the one who does.

My Bell’s Palsy was not the joyride I was hoping for. The medications I was on were making it worse. Prednisone is a bitch, and an appetite inducer to boot. And at the beginning of the month I had entered into a weight loss contest with my friends at work, and I was going the wrong way. And because my room had no fridge, the Riunite was always warm.

- - -

"The Serious Version of Events"

But there was my wife. And our son. And our little girl, who was about to celebrate her 1st birthday. And for the first time in perhaps the first nine years of our marriage, I found myself sending Lexie love notes. I had never so eagerly looked forward to a flight home, and that includes September 11, 2001 when I was stuck in Manhattan.

For those of you who travel, perhaps you can appreciate the divine moment when you find yourself home standing in front of your door. You pause just a moment before turning the key. The dog's barking doesn't really bother you that much. You can hear the little feet running through the house. The Odyssey, on a much smaller, much more domestic scale.

She was crying at the door, as though she hadn’t stopped for the four days I was gone. Do you know what that feels like? If everyone did there could be no more hatred in the world. She took my bag, and after I gave Tristan his daddy-back-from-business-gift, Alex drew me a bath and washed my hair.

- - -

"And the Rest, Neither Funny nor Serious, Just There"

Although I take medical leave from work, I do stop by the office. I actually enjoy the attention of getting teased, so I bask in the abuse I take from my co-workers. My boss is still upset that I went to San Francisco with a paralyzed head, but she gives me a hug when I arrive. None of them can really tell that I have Bell’s Palsy, however, until I try to smile.

The symptoms are exactly the same as the first day. My right lips still do not work. My right tongue does not taste. My right eye does not shut. My right forehead does not crinkle. More than one person comments that it looks as though I've gotten Botox.

- - -

On Saturday I wake up and try to whistle. Nothing. My right ear hurts very badly, though, and in a fit of whimsy I decide to cut my own hair.

For some reason, the Bell’s is affecting my ability to do this, perhaps because my eye is bothering me so badly. In any case, I wind up knocking the guard off the clippers by mistake and cutting a big chunk of hair all the way to the scalp.

I start laughing. If my neighbor would have looked over the fence, he would have seen a man laughing with only half his face, a dark pile of hair at his feet, a big mangy bald spot in the side of his head. The laughing is what's creepy. I laugh way too goddamn much and at the least thing.

There’s nothing to be done, though. I shave my head completely. And in spite of the Prednisone I have still managed to lose 10 pounds on our weight loss contest.

When my parents see me the next day, wearing a patch, suddenly bald and skinny and with a paralyzed head, they are convinced I am dying.

only one more…