Lyrical

Woke up quick, at about noon and started making banana pancakes. The earth was shaking, and my mind was aching from last night's gin and juice. Gravity just kept working against me in my teenage wasteland. So, I decided to take this sad song and make it better. I kicked off my Sunday shoes and electrically slid right out the back door of my home in Illinois.

I was just sitting in the afternoon sun when a material girl pulled up next to me and asked me to get in her car. “In your dreams!” I got on a magic bus, and the wheels were going round and round when I think I saw God trying to make His way home. Da. Da. Da. When we got to my stop, I stood up, and put one of those fingers on each hand up and pulled the chord. I walked the line and stepped off into a whole new world.

I crossed Highway Hell and a bridge over troubled water to my favorite little shop on the corner. I ordered a yellow sub and an American pie and washed them down with some red, red wine. Good thing I didn’t spill it. I just sat there, waiting and wishing for my friend Johnny Begoode, but he didn’t show because I think he got high. I guess that friend wouldn’t help me get by.

Seeing clearly now and flying high as a kite, I felt like the fortunate son. On the intersection of Thunder Road and Route 66, I saw a gold friend hanging in the backstreet. I shouted, “Louie!” A little bit louder now, “Louie!” He wanted to get jiggy with it, but I said, “Hey, now. You’re an all-star! Don’t you have to play?” He said that he was a free bird and asked to go to the place where guitars gently weep and the piano man plays for free.

There was a Bohemian band playing their rhapsody, making me comfortably numb. As Louie and I watched what was going on, all our friends came in like rolling stones. Layla, Jude, Eleanor, Billy, Jeane, and even that hound dog Baba. God only knows where he came from. I could only imagine. We started to feel the teen spirit and good vibrations, rocking and rolling all night long. I was feeling white and nerdy so Dougie taught me some new moves. We stayed all together now until the night slipped away and we saw the rising sun. The dawn’s early light had a purple haze.

Eventually we walked our own way and I was soon falling slowly into my bed. As the sandman entered and I drifted into the river of dreams, I smiled. Tonight was a good, good night. I had a feeling it would be.

All The King's Horses

Joe will never forget the sound of bone meeting pavement.

On October 17th, 2003 I was a freshman at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. It was a Friday. I and a dozen or so freshman teammates were given the task of “hosting” a dozen or so swimming recruits. We were essentially their personal guides to Madison and the team itself. In our efforts to “wine and dine” them, we decided bowling would be a good activity. The real fun, we thought, would come after Saturday morning practice before the football game vs. Purdue. We met in the main lobby of our dorm, “The Towers”, before excitedly herding out the sliding doors. It was a cool, clear night, and I was wearing a black Badgers sweatshirt with a white t-shirt underneath that would soon become unwearable.

The plan was to walk a few blocks where a group of seniors and juniors would pick us up and drive us to the bowling alley at Union South. I was in a good mood. I was energetic. I was feeling goofy and fun. I shouted, “Screw this! I’ll just ride Darren!” And in the middle of a tiny cul-de-sac nestled between State Street Brats and University Inn, I jogged a few steps ahead to my buddy Darren, placed my hands on his shoulders, and vaulted myself straight up. Not unlike the motion of pulling myself out of a pool. Now, I had no intention of actually piggy-backing Darren. But how would he know this? He put his arms behind his back and grabbed my legs just above the knee. I did not hold on. With my legs acting as a fulcrum, I plummeted backwards from about eight feet up (Darren had to be at least 6’4”). I landed with the full force of my 185 pounds directly on the back left side of my head.

I have no memory of the impact. The rest of the evening is broken into a series of vivid images. Sitting on the curb, confused beyond imagination, repeatedly stating, “This is not good… this is not good...” A passerby rushing into University Inn for towels. The vibrant red overwhelming the bleached cotton. Kevin frantically driving to the hospital in his Jeep Wrangler. Chris in the back seat holding the soggy towel against my head. The wheelchair. The drawn curtain. The staple gun closing the wound. “Ca-chunk! Ca-chunk!” The doctor repeatedly asking, “Have you been drinking?” Me repeatedly shaking my head. The Dixie cup full of pills. Amanda, Kevin’s girlfriend, giving me my only sense of calm by holding my hand and stroking my arm. The worry on her face. Being moved to my own room. Cranking my neck to keep up with the spinning ceiling. Throwing up Urban Pizza. The nurses waking me every hour so I didn’t drift into a coma. The golden sun filling my sterile room.

My mom, after making what she calls the longest drive of her life, listened with me to the doctor the following day. Grade III concussion. Skull fracture. Hemorrhaging. Bruised brain. Damaged cochlea. Permanent. The last clear thing my left ear would hear is my ear canal filling up with blood. I cried as my mom could only hug me.

I soon realized, though, this was no time for tears. I had to learn to walk again down the hospital hallway, my mom on one side, my IV on the other. I had to rest at the hospital and then at home in Barrington while my athletic counselor dealt with my professors. I had to figure out how to do sit-ups and flip-turns without vomiting. With the help of family, teammates, and friends, I regained my balance, finished on the Dean’s List, and got best times in the 200 and 500 freestyle by the end of my freshman year. But my left ear is still silent.

Beyond the obvious lesson of “NEVER do that again!” this experience taught me the unimaginable impact of my choices. There are a thousand strings attached to every decision I make in my life. Just think: I jump on Darren’s back in 2003 and you’re now reading a blog post. Every choice I make echoes throughout my entire existence, and because time continues to move forward, every choice is permanent. I am a free man when making my choices in life but a slave to their results.

Sometimes these choices are big, and I understand their gravity. I thoroughly consider where I go to school, where I work, who I marry. But most choices are small and automatic. And a select few of those can have a major impact. Anyone who was “in the wrong place at the wrong time” can attest to that. Will a change of clothes set forth my demise or simply ensure I see that rainbow before I get to the office? My doctor said that my decision to wear a winter hat that Friday night probably saved my life.

A couple months ago I went to see a Otolaryngologist (aka ENT) to see if technology has caught up to my injury. I took a hearing test in a padded room the size of a walk-in closet. While my right hand was very active, my left hand remained mostly still in my lap. After looking at the results, the doctor said that a hearing aid is out of the question. Simply turning up the volume will not help. A cochlear implant, which would address my problem directly, would work if I damaged both ears. Cochlear implants are not suggested for unilateral hearing loss. The sound would be delayed, raspy, and largely imperfect, confusing the sound processing in my brain. The only real option is a Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid (BAHA), in which a small rod is drilled into the left side of my head behind the ear. A receiving box captures noise coming from the left and sends the vibrations through my skull to my right ear. For vanity’s sake, I declined the offer. At least for now.

For the time being I will continue to put people on my right and sit on the left end of the dinner table. I will politely ask people to repeat things or sometimes give up and simply smile. I will miss out on some movies’ surround sound and always have an extra headphone. I will cock my head to the left to hear someone in a crowded party. I will worry my mom as I cross the street. My kids will learn to “talk into Daddy’s good ear.” I will tell this story many times throughout my life, knowing that I’ve lost my spare. That I don’t have a back up anymore. It’s not a tragedy. It’s not even a shame. It’s just life. My life. And I have no choice but to keep on living it.

We Will Never Forget

“Happy National Emergency Day, everybody!”

I was a junior in high school when my photography teacher opened up the day with this remark to a sleepy class of 16 and 17 year olds. “September 11th? 9-1-1? Get it? No? Never mind. Get to work.” After only a few weeks into the school year, we had already become numb to his eccentricities. We shuffled to the huge dark room to work on artistically expressing ourselves through black and white images. A little bit before 8:00AM one of the few kids with their own cell phone got a text that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center in NYC. Two thoughts popped into my head: “which one is the World Trade Center again?” and an image of a small prop plane helplessly smashing into a rigid building.

By the time first period was over at 8:19AM, 22 minutes had passed since the second plane hit the South Tower. I walked out of the classroom into a hallway abuzz with words like “attack” “terrorist,” and “holy fucking shit.” Second period calculus was a blur as news came in that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, another plane crashed somewhere in rural Pennsylvania, and the buildings were starting to fall. It had become clear that this was a calculated strike. On the classroom’s TV in third period psych, I watched in horror as the North Tower gracefully fell at 9:28AM leaving nothing but open sky. Mr. Galovich had never heard his class so silent.

Fear was fully in force and panic was starting to settle in. Principal Leonard was considering sending kids home. “What if Chicago is next? These kids will want to be with their parents.” To maintain order, a decision was made to keep school going. Most teachers just suspended class and allowed us to watch the news in the classrooms. Large screens and projectors were set up in the cafeteria during the lunch periods. This granted us some sense of control—if we could watch the events and react together to what we were witnessing, perhaps we wouldn’t feel so caged. My English teacher was the only one who kept business as usual. “You’ll have plenty of time to watch TV tonight.” I hated him. I couldn’t analyze Ethan Frome at a time like this. History was happening! Years later I realized that he was just as scared as we were and dealing with it in his own way.

Shocked. Dazed. Stunned. Horrified. These words aren’t enough to describe the exact feeling of that day, but by the time I went to bed I just felt numb. And as new information, images, and videos came out in the days, weeks, and months following that idle Tuesday, my numbness never went away. I heard stories of people jumping from the top floors instead of burning to death. Of firefighters blindly running up the stairs against panicked hordes of people. Of loving calls and texts amidst imminent death. Even of the devil’s face appearing in the bellowing smoke. I was watching a horror movie that was not only based on actual events but happening in real time.

Flash forward almost ten years. I know all about Afghanistan, Iraq, WMDs, the “surge,” al-Queda, the Taliban, shoe bombers, and underwear bombers. I no longer have 8 periods of classes or worry about swim practice. I work 9-12 hours a day and discuss cash flows. I work on the 56th floor in downtown Chicago and get butterflies when I see a low flying plane circling the city to land at O’Hare. And now I’m about to go to bed after watching the movie Moon with Tegan. But before I plug my phone in, I see a text from my friend Andy. “Turn on CNN.” Within a few minutes we watch President Obama explain that Osama bin Laden has been killed. “Justice has been done.”

Over the ensuing days, many questions have been squawked about on the national news. What was the proper way to celebrate? Are the grisly pictures going to be released? What will this do to the President’s polling numbers? How many people have made the Obama/Osama mistake? What does this mean about our relationship with Pakistan? Should we leave Afghanistan? The discussion reminds me of all the questions that were raised beginning September 12th, once we shed our wordless disbelief. Hearing Osama’s name over and over has had an odd nostalgic ring to it. Through it all, one thing is certain, however: our war with terrorism is not over. But my numbness from that horrific day settles just a bit because I know that, at the very least, many of the friends and family of loved ones lost to Osama bin Laden went to bed on May 2nd, 2011 with a sense of closure.

George Carlin once had a comic bit that amounted to, “no one gives a shit where you were when JFK was shot.” He was making fun of people who give themselves a false sense of importance by connecting themselves to monumental events. Despite my being a huge fan, I have to disagree with Mr. Carlin on this one. We only see through our own eyes, and memories are stronger and more vivid when framed by our personal experiences. September 11th, 2001 was supposed to be just another random Tuesday. It wasn’t. Now, I’ll never forget “National Emergency Day!” or Ethan Frome or the projectors in the cafeteria. And no one will ever forget what menial task they were doing before the first plane hit or how they reacted to it. Because of these grounded memories, we will never forget those who were lost that day and what it did to us as a country, even after our most skilled fighters took out the madman who made it happen.

No. We will never forget.