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Autobiographical songs are the usually the very definition of maudlin -- tearfully sentimental screeds. (For all you Dan Brown Da Vinci Code fans, the term derives from the Old French word Madeleine, describing the weeping of Mary Magdalene.) Brian Wilson’s song, “In My Room,” an early Beach Boys hit, touchingly portrays a boy describing how his bedroom is a haven from his teenage angst, but does not mention the Playboy magazines under his mattress.
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MEF: Model Educational Facility, or Marble Educational Farce. Here’s why I have come to this sad conclusion:
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MEF International School (MEFIS) was an afterthought, possibly intended to bring in more money to the MEF National School or, hopefully, some prestige. MEFIS is therefore the stepchild. Like Cinderella, we get the leftovers. My Room is nested on the third floor of the National School’s Music Building. When I must meet with administrators or colleagues, or even need to make photocopies, I face a long, uphill, exposed-to-the-weather walk to the building where the other MEFIS classrooms are located, as well as the cafeteria.
.
My Room is actually located on the fourth floor by American standards, since in Turkey the ground floor is the bottom one and the first floor is the next one up (amazing concept!). However, to get to the ground floor, I have to walk down a flight of marble stairs before I can begin climbing the three flights of marble stairs to My Room. Each flight of stairs consists of 20 marble steps. There is no elevator, hence no wheelchair access. But then, of course, there are no handicapped people in Turkey, as well as no homeless people, no homosexuals, no radicals, etc. In Islamotropolis, these aberrations only occur among the infidels.
.
My Room originally consisted of two L-shaped piano practice rooms. To create My Room, MEF simply removed the dividing wall. Get a piece of graph paper. Starting at the upper left, [1] draw a line down 6 squares; [2] now go horizontally to the right 12 squares; [3] go up 6 squares; [4] go left 4 squares; [5] go down 2 squares; [6] go left 4 squares; [7] go up 2 squares; [8] from there, draw a line to your starting point. You now have a crow, pigeon and seagull view of my room if the roof were removed (which, if such were to occur, would rapidly fill up with guano, since these birds are always swooping by or landing on window sills during the daylight hours).
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My desk with its circa 1995 computer faces the entryway [7]. On the opposite side of My Room is a mauve “Pearl River” Yamaha upright piano (just tuned today!). Behind the piano, the walls are filled with 3-tiered open wooden cabinets containing six guitars with broken strings, six dusty, unused electronic keyboards, boxes full of discarded drama texts, some ridiculous metallic, so-called Turkish drums, two nice conga drums and, closer, a freestanding cabinet containing my music theory packets and a CD player so old it does not have a pause function. Imagine trying to explain the significance of the six-note French horn transition between the major theme groups in the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 without being able to pause! I knew you would understand my frustration.
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My Room has two large windows at stages [1] and [3]. The window at stage [1] has protective metal bars to prevent someone from entering my room from the adjacent roof. The window at stage [3] has no such bars, so that a child could fall four stories to certain death by gravity + marble. So, by MEF thinking, it is more important to protect the unusable guitars and dusty electronic keyboards than the children. For reasons obvious to me but not to MEF, I have positioned my piano in front of this window.
.
Position [2] consists of a solid wall of window panes, with a magnificent view of an escarpment of apartment complexes that rises higher than the school, looming above an under-developed valley adorned with serpentine, broken-linked waves of attractive, modern stone walls separated by waste dumps and hungry dogs. Somebody spent a lot of lira to put up those pretty walls, but nothing has yet to come of this speculative investment.
.
Into My Room come children from grades 5 through 9, winded from the climb up the flights of marble stairs. There are not enough chairs for the students in grades 8 (24) and 9 (22) to sit, so the late-comers have to plunk down on the floor or squeeze in onto the heaters. I have to buy pencils and sharpeners to give to those students who arrive without them. Turkish pencils do not have erasers, and classrooms do not have wall-mounted pencil sharpeners. Every student is expected to carry from class to class a zippered cloth bag the size and shape of a Taco Del Mar burrito containing the equivalent of the contents of a competent secretary’s right-hand desk drawer: pencils, pens, erasers, pencil sharpeners, highlighters, adhesive tape, white out, permanent markers, post-its, paper clips, rubber bands, you name it. In the meantime, since I received no classroom supplies this year (I even had to buy my own printer and ink cartridges), I provide my students anything extra or lost from the above categories from a mobile cabinet, a three-drawer knee-banger on coasters with broken knobs that fits under my desk and slides away at the slightest nudge so that I frequently have to disappear under my desk to pull it back into sight, usually bumping my head in front of my bemused students. (Actually, I always do that on purpose to make them laugh.)
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I am going to miss these kids, and my fellow ex-pat teachers. But I will not regret leaving MEF International School.
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Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Upon My Second Birthday in Istanbul (February 10, 2011)
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"‘I’m more likely to get hit by a motorcycle on this sidewalk than I am by crossing the street," I thought as I made my way to the bus stop. It was a beautiful Thursday, cold and clear. I was on my way to visit an exhibit that had caught my interest over a year ago, but which I had yet to see. It was billed as the "1453 Panorama", 1453 being the year that Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks and became Istanbul. The exhibit was just outside a stretch of some of the remaining Theodosian walls, magnificent structures that had protected Constantinople for centuries until the Turks finally created cannons powerful enough to bring them down, while the Western Christians refused to provide any reinforcements.
.
The bus was, as usual, quite warm, but today it felt good. After a while it filled up to a point that someone had to sit beside me. Turks do not like to invade the space of foreigners until there is only one choice: stand or sit. They know I am a foreigner because of my mutton-chop beard and the fact that I wear Birkenstocks with socks in cold weather. (They stare at my feet. If my feet were breasts, maybe I could understand better how women must feel when trying to carry on a conversation with a lusty male.) Also, women do not sit next to men until the same choice has to be made. A well-attired woman chose to sit next to me. After a reasonable time, not wanting to appear over-eager or aggressive, I asked if she spoke English. She said “No.”
.
I turned my attention to the ever-changing city. I noticed that Doritos was offering heart-shaped chips in honor of Valentine’s Day (never mind that Valentine was a Christian martyr, sainted in 500 AD). I noticed for the first time that there were huge nests high up in the trees inside the Topkapi Palace complex, big enough for herons. (Topkapi means "cannon ball," which is pertinent to our 1453 theme). I noticed that there were no guards stationed in the Plexiglas cubicles outside Dolmabahce Palace, probably because it was too cold. Normally there would be two formally attired guards with polished steel helmets and ceremonial automatic weapons, no matter how hot it was in direct sunlight, stationed outside the Dolmebahce (pronounced dole-meh-BAH-jeh, meaning a garden built on reclaimed land) Gate, a vigorously ornate barrier that couldn’t stop a motorcycle that had accidentally jumped the curb and had actually come down onto the street for a change. My mind wandered. My current students think Glee is real. They refuse to believe that American high schools are not inhabited by 20-somethings with perfect teeth, nor that all schools do not have million dollar budgets for stage productions.
.
I asked the woman still seated next to me, auf Deutsch, if she spoke German. She said “Nein.” My keenly honed interpersonal skills alerted me that she didn’t want to talk.
.
Upon arriving at the exhibit, I was surprised to see that there was a cue of people outside. That was fine, because I always carry a book (currently "Invictus" -- history and rugby, the perfect combination) just for such contingencies. The entry fee was 10TL, but my teacher pass got me in for 5. Once in the building, I spent the other 5 on an electronic device that would speak to me in English. I slipped it around my neck and went to stand in another line and reopened my book. I then slipped my valise over my shoulder so that it wouldn’t get jostled off when the line finally moved forward.
.
When the line finally moved forward, we ascended a dark, winding staircase and came out under a large dome painted with scenes depicting the glorious Turks killing the infidels. I struggled to get the English translating device to my ears, but its cords had become so entangled in the straps of my valise that they had created a macramé on my chest. I knew that there was a time limit to my visit, having seen previous crowds being ushered out en masse. I had to work fast. My disentanglement struggles were heightened by Turkish children head-butting my private regions. I finally got the cords free and the speaker phones onto my ears in time to hear a brilliant, succinct description of the actions depicted on the huge, convex mural in TURKISH!
.
There was a large fellow standing beside a control panel wearing the costume of a Janissary (the Sultan’s personal guards -- slaves, formerly Christian children). I gestured at the device, said “Ingilizce” (English) and he calmly punched some buttons, each of which I had just pushed to no effect, and English flooded into my ears. I had made it to the second station when the announcement to exit sounded. UNFAIR! I hung in there. One scene depicted the interior of Constantinople, and the narrator said I should be able to see Hagia Sophia in the background. I looked and looked. Then I realized that I didn’t recognize it because it did not have minarets yet! It was just a distant bulge on the horizon. I lingered for as long as I could, then I cautiously dribbled down the stairs like the last drop swirling down a drain.
.
On the way home, I got off the tram in Gulhane (meaning "place of roses"), just outside the North Shield Pub, a venue that carries international rugby on TV. The paper announcements that were adhered to the brick exterior informed me that I now have birthday presents awaiting me this weekend: on Saturday, England vs Italy, and Scotland vs Wales; on Sunday, Ireland vs France.
.
Then I walked on to Sirkeci (pronounced SEER-keh-jee, meaning something to do with a circus) Main Station, which was the last stop of the Orient Express. The foundation stone was laid in 1888 (one year before Washington became a state, and Germany became unified under Bismarck). The station opened in 1890. The first voyage of the Orient Express departed from Paris to the sounds of Mozart’s "Turkish March" (which Nancy plays so well, but which I can no longer stand, since it seems to be the only piece by Wolfgang that Turks know or play. It is constantly ringing in my music building, making me long for “Chopsticks” or “Heart and Soul”). The train passed through Strasbourg, France; Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Ulm and Munich, Germany; Vienna, Austria; Budapest, Hungary; Bucharest, Romania; Rousse and Varna, Bulgaria; and terminated in Sirkeci, Istanbul. The Orient Express stopped running in 1977, the year my son, Matthew, was born (I think). [EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, that's correct. -- MV.]
.
"‘I’m more likely to get hit by a motorcycle on this sidewalk than I am by crossing the street," I thought as I made my way to the bus stop. It was a beautiful Thursday, cold and clear. I was on my way to visit an exhibit that had caught my interest over a year ago, but which I had yet to see. It was billed as the "1453 Panorama", 1453 being the year that Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks and became Istanbul. The exhibit was just outside a stretch of some of the remaining Theodosian walls, magnificent structures that had protected Constantinople for centuries until the Turks finally created cannons powerful enough to bring them down, while the Western Christians refused to provide any reinforcements.
.
The bus was, as usual, quite warm, but today it felt good. After a while it filled up to a point that someone had to sit beside me. Turks do not like to invade the space of foreigners until there is only one choice: stand or sit. They know I am a foreigner because of my mutton-chop beard and the fact that I wear Birkenstocks with socks in cold weather. (They stare at my feet. If my feet were breasts, maybe I could understand better how women must feel when trying to carry on a conversation with a lusty male.) Also, women do not sit next to men until the same choice has to be made. A well-attired woman chose to sit next to me. After a reasonable time, not wanting to appear over-eager or aggressive, I asked if she spoke English. She said “No.”
.
I turned my attention to the ever-changing city. I noticed that Doritos was offering heart-shaped chips in honor of Valentine’s Day (never mind that Valentine was a Christian martyr, sainted in 500 AD). I noticed for the first time that there were huge nests high up in the trees inside the Topkapi Palace complex, big enough for herons. (Topkapi means "cannon ball," which is pertinent to our 1453 theme). I noticed that there were no guards stationed in the Plexiglas cubicles outside Dolmabahce Palace, probably because it was too cold. Normally there would be two formally attired guards with polished steel helmets and ceremonial automatic weapons, no matter how hot it was in direct sunlight, stationed outside the Dolmebahce (pronounced dole-meh-BAH-jeh, meaning a garden built on reclaimed land) Gate, a vigorously ornate barrier that couldn’t stop a motorcycle that had accidentally jumped the curb and had actually come down onto the street for a change. My mind wandered. My current students think Glee is real. They refuse to believe that American high schools are not inhabited by 20-somethings with perfect teeth, nor that all schools do not have million dollar budgets for stage productions.
.
I asked the woman still seated next to me, auf Deutsch, if she spoke German. She said “Nein.” My keenly honed interpersonal skills alerted me that she didn’t want to talk.
.
Upon arriving at the exhibit, I was surprised to see that there was a cue of people outside. That was fine, because I always carry a book (currently "Invictus" -- history and rugby, the perfect combination) just for such contingencies. The entry fee was 10TL, but my teacher pass got me in for 5. Once in the building, I spent the other 5 on an electronic device that would speak to me in English. I slipped it around my neck and went to stand in another line and reopened my book. I then slipped my valise over my shoulder so that it wouldn’t get jostled off when the line finally moved forward.
.
When the line finally moved forward, we ascended a dark, winding staircase and came out under a large dome painted with scenes depicting the glorious Turks killing the infidels. I struggled to get the English translating device to my ears, but its cords had become so entangled in the straps of my valise that they had created a macramé on my chest. I knew that there was a time limit to my visit, having seen previous crowds being ushered out en masse. I had to work fast. My disentanglement struggles were heightened by Turkish children head-butting my private regions. I finally got the cords free and the speaker phones onto my ears in time to hear a brilliant, succinct description of the actions depicted on the huge, convex mural in TURKISH!
.
There was a large fellow standing beside a control panel wearing the costume of a Janissary (the Sultan’s personal guards -- slaves, formerly Christian children). I gestured at the device, said “Ingilizce” (English) and he calmly punched some buttons, each of which I had just pushed to no effect, and English flooded into my ears. I had made it to the second station when the announcement to exit sounded. UNFAIR! I hung in there. One scene depicted the interior of Constantinople, and the narrator said I should be able to see Hagia Sophia in the background. I looked and looked. Then I realized that I didn’t recognize it because it did not have minarets yet! It was just a distant bulge on the horizon. I lingered for as long as I could, then I cautiously dribbled down the stairs like the last drop swirling down a drain.
.
On the way home, I got off the tram in Gulhane (meaning "place of roses"), just outside the North Shield Pub, a venue that carries international rugby on TV. The paper announcements that were adhered to the brick exterior informed me that I now have birthday presents awaiting me this weekend: on Saturday, England vs Italy, and Scotland vs Wales; on Sunday, Ireland vs France.
.
Then I walked on to Sirkeci (pronounced SEER-keh-jee, meaning something to do with a circus) Main Station, which was the last stop of the Orient Express. The foundation stone was laid in 1888 (one year before Washington became a state, and Germany became unified under Bismarck). The station opened in 1890. The first voyage of the Orient Express departed from Paris to the sounds of Mozart’s "Turkish March" (which Nancy plays so well, but which I can no longer stand, since it seems to be the only piece by Wolfgang that Turks know or play. It is constantly ringing in my music building, making me long for “Chopsticks” or “Heart and Soul”). The train passed through Strasbourg, France; Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Ulm and Munich, Germany; Vienna, Austria; Budapest, Hungary; Bucharest, Romania; Rousse and Varna, Bulgaria; and terminated in Sirkeci, Istanbul. The Orient Express stopped running in 1977, the year my son, Matthew, was born (I think). [EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, that's correct. -- MV.]
.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Upon Visiting Dr. ENT
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Ears are a musician’s best friend. Unless one is a titanic genius like Beethoven, hearing loss can be a career-ending disaster. So, recently, after a morning shower, when I removed the cotton swab I had been using to clean my right ear and noticed that the stem of the swab no longer held a small ball of cotton on the end, I became concerned. Sure enough, after many, many years of cleaning my ears with cotton swabs (a very pleasurable experience, I find), the dreaded warnings of my parents, siblings, teachers and friends had finally come true -- I had a wad of cotton jammed up against an ear drum.
.
It was like when I was hit in the face by a basketball last fall, and one of the lenses of my glasses was knocked out, without my being aware of it at the time, as I was, understandably, slightly dazed. (I don’t play basketball, never have. I can appreciate the athleticism of the sport, especially when played at the higher levels, but I hate being in an over-heated gym, and I always flinch when that horrid klaxon goes off to announce someone is entering/leaving the floor. As a former rugby player, I also dislike sports that have so many time outs—just play the game and have your meetings afterward.) Anyway, this annoyingly long analogy refers to the fact that, during the remainder of that basketball-dazed day, I wondered if I had received a slight concussion, because my vision was blurry. It wasn’t until I casually took off my glasses to rub the lenses clean that I discovered that the left lens was missing. Now I was dealing with blurry, better yet, fuzzy hearing.
.
I tried to remove the wad of cotton myself using first wooden toothpicks (stupid, yes, but I’m a guy), then the sharp, curved end of a device intended for flossing teeth. No luck, and, luckily, no damage. So I went to the school doctor in hopes that he could help. I took a clean cotton swab from which I had removed the cotton from one end (Why take the original? Who wants a ball of day-old ear wax in their breast pocket for a couple of hours? Shrek?). Using the open-ended swab, I mimed the action and the doctor got the idea. He probed my ear with a light, and tried to extract the wad with the smallest pair of tweezers he had—a surgical clamp (you know, the kind that, so I’ve heard, makes a good roach clip). He shoved a roach clip down my ear canal! Needless to say, it didn’t work.
.
He recommended me to Dr. ENT who works in a clinic in Besiktas, and wrote me a note with all the necessary information. A Turkish friend told me that the doctor’s note would be easily understood by any taxi driver, and that I should arrive in the morning so as to avoid a crowd and not have to wait a long time. So I followed her advice and slept in until 11:00. I didn’t want to take a taxi from my apartment all the way to the clinic (too expensive), and my friend had warned that the clinic was a top of a very steep hill, but if I took a bus all the way to Besiktas the taxi drivers wouldn’t take me because the trip was too short for them to make a decent fare.
.
So I took a bus to Ortakoy, then walked half the way to Besiktas. It’s level, along the Bosphorous, and the weather outside wasn't frightful (doot-da-doot-doot-da-DOO-doot ). The taxi driver drove me right up to the building that I assumed housed the clinic. To do so, he made a sharp left turn from the middle lane of a busy, six-lane Boulevard (not an unusual tactic by Istanbul driving standards), cutting off a passenger car which had to brake suddenly and was immediately rammed from behind by another vehicle. Undaunted, my taxi driver continued his multi-lane U-turn, leaving behind the honking, swearing occupants of the vehicles damaged by this maneuver. We both understood his situation: he needed to get out of there, fast. I paid quickly, laughed as he sped away, and entered the building.
.
After climbing two flights of stairs, I was told that I was in the wrong building, and I needed to go back outside and turn left at !@#$%^&* Street. Which I did. !@#$%^&* Street consisted of a stairway of 186 concrete steps. Once I reached the top, I faced even more climbing up a very steep street. But wait! There was a guard kiosk that protected an upper entrance to the same building I had just left. I could have taken an elevator! The guard looked at my note and started laughing. I was too winded to join in the jocular ribaldry. He pointed me back down the stairs to one building farther to the left. He was still laughing as I started down.
.
Once I entered the correct building, I had to climb 36 more stairs to get to the clinic. So my morning step aerobics regimen included 222 ascending and descending stairs, all accomplished without breakfast and while half deaf. I checked in, hung up my hat and coat and waited for a seat to open. The place was packed, mostly with families of small children. Turks are very fecund. But why is there so much illness of the ears, noses and throats of the young, especially since they bundle the children up so tightly at the slightest hint of coolness? Today, the temperature was in the 40’s (F), yet anyone with a fur-lined hood had it tightly winched around their head, zipped parkas and ski gloves were everywhere. Maybe it’s because, oh, what the hell, I don’t care.
.
Dr. ENT saw me after a mere 20 minute wait. The wad was out in seconds. He repeated the warnings of my parents, siblings, teachers and friends. I now have 20/20 hearing again. So, I have learned a valuable later-in-life lesson: when it comes to showers and cotton swabs -- no more showers!
.
Ears are a musician’s best friend. Unless one is a titanic genius like Beethoven, hearing loss can be a career-ending disaster. So, recently, after a morning shower, when I removed the cotton swab I had been using to clean my right ear and noticed that the stem of the swab no longer held a small ball of cotton on the end, I became concerned. Sure enough, after many, many years of cleaning my ears with cotton swabs (a very pleasurable experience, I find), the dreaded warnings of my parents, siblings, teachers and friends had finally come true -- I had a wad of cotton jammed up against an ear drum.
.
It was like when I was hit in the face by a basketball last fall, and one of the lenses of my glasses was knocked out, without my being aware of it at the time, as I was, understandably, slightly dazed. (I don’t play basketball, never have. I can appreciate the athleticism of the sport, especially when played at the higher levels, but I hate being in an over-heated gym, and I always flinch when that horrid klaxon goes off to announce someone is entering/leaving the floor. As a former rugby player, I also dislike sports that have so many time outs—just play the game and have your meetings afterward.) Anyway, this annoyingly long analogy refers to the fact that, during the remainder of that basketball-dazed day, I wondered if I had received a slight concussion, because my vision was blurry. It wasn’t until I casually took off my glasses to rub the lenses clean that I discovered that the left lens was missing. Now I was dealing with blurry, better yet, fuzzy hearing.
.
I tried to remove the wad of cotton myself using first wooden toothpicks (stupid, yes, but I’m a guy), then the sharp, curved end of a device intended for flossing teeth. No luck, and, luckily, no damage. So I went to the school doctor in hopes that he could help. I took a clean cotton swab from which I had removed the cotton from one end (Why take the original? Who wants a ball of day-old ear wax in their breast pocket for a couple of hours? Shrek?). Using the open-ended swab, I mimed the action and the doctor got the idea. He probed my ear with a light, and tried to extract the wad with the smallest pair of tweezers he had—a surgical clamp (you know, the kind that, so I’ve heard, makes a good roach clip). He shoved a roach clip down my ear canal! Needless to say, it didn’t work.
.
He recommended me to Dr. ENT who works in a clinic in Besiktas, and wrote me a note with all the necessary information. A Turkish friend told me that the doctor’s note would be easily understood by any taxi driver, and that I should arrive in the morning so as to avoid a crowd and not have to wait a long time. So I followed her advice and slept in until 11:00. I didn’t want to take a taxi from my apartment all the way to the clinic (too expensive), and my friend had warned that the clinic was a top of a very steep hill, but if I took a bus all the way to Besiktas the taxi drivers wouldn’t take me because the trip was too short for them to make a decent fare.
.
So I took a bus to Ortakoy, then walked half the way to Besiktas. It’s level, along the Bosphorous, and the weather outside wasn't frightful (doot-da-doot-doot-da-DOO-doot ). The taxi driver drove me right up to the building that I assumed housed the clinic. To do so, he made a sharp left turn from the middle lane of a busy, six-lane Boulevard (not an unusual tactic by Istanbul driving standards), cutting off a passenger car which had to brake suddenly and was immediately rammed from behind by another vehicle. Undaunted, my taxi driver continued his multi-lane U-turn, leaving behind the honking, swearing occupants of the vehicles damaged by this maneuver. We both understood his situation: he needed to get out of there, fast. I paid quickly, laughed as he sped away, and entered the building.
.
After climbing two flights of stairs, I was told that I was in the wrong building, and I needed to go back outside and turn left at !@#$%^&* Street. Which I did. !@#$%^&* Street consisted of a stairway of 186 concrete steps. Once I reached the top, I faced even more climbing up a very steep street. But wait! There was a guard kiosk that protected an upper entrance to the same building I had just left. I could have taken an elevator! The guard looked at my note and started laughing. I was too winded to join in the jocular ribaldry. He pointed me back down the stairs to one building farther to the left. He was still laughing as I started down.
.
Once I entered the correct building, I had to climb 36 more stairs to get to the clinic. So my morning step aerobics regimen included 222 ascending and descending stairs, all accomplished without breakfast and while half deaf. I checked in, hung up my hat and coat and waited for a seat to open. The place was packed, mostly with families of small children. Turks are very fecund. But why is there so much illness of the ears, noses and throats of the young, especially since they bundle the children up so tightly at the slightest hint of coolness? Today, the temperature was in the 40’s (F), yet anyone with a fur-lined hood had it tightly winched around their head, zipped parkas and ski gloves were everywhere. Maybe it’s because, oh, what the hell, I don’t care.
.
Dr. ENT saw me after a mere 20 minute wait. The wad was out in seconds. He repeated the warnings of my parents, siblings, teachers and friends. I now have 20/20 hearing again. So, I have learned a valuable later-in-life lesson: when it comes to showers and cotton swabs -- no more showers!
.
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