A Concatenation of Cataclysms
Yesterday I had mild,
sporadic tinnitus in my blocked, hearing-impaired right ear, which was kind of
annoying and made me slightly anxious that some permanent damage might be being
inflicted. That night when I went to bed, I had a clogged nose and my ear was
still blocked and squealing quietly. Since my sinusitis and shitty ears were
starting to really agitate me, I decided I would do something about it: I hence
started blowing snot out of my right nostril like nobody's business in a
(probably) quixotic attempt to clear out my sinuses and thereby unblock my
right ear. I was holding my nostril open with my left index finger and blowing furiously,
depositing the sticky snot on my sheets (why not?). Eventually, after maybe
half an hour, it did seem like I had unblocked my ear somewhat, but then, maybe
as a result of this, that ear started to hurt like hell. The pain was very
intense. I couldn't rest on that ear because it was so sore. It kind of felt
like all the nerves were exposed to the air or something. It was a really terrific
ache. I tried to rest with only my left ear on the pillow to get to sleep, but
I am used to constantly changing sides when I sleep and the forced stasis was
putting me off my routine. Consequently, more than two hours passed with me unable
to get any shut-eye. Finally, at 12:20pm, I decided to temporarily give up on
the possibility of sleeping and instead go searching in the kitchen for some
kind of painkiller to allay the ache. There I found some Panadol and took two
tablets. I don't know if the Panadol worked, but I do know I got to sleep about
ten minutes after I returned to bed post-pills and in the morning the ache was
gone.
My ear was still
blocked, though, and the hearing was still impaired. Oh, and the mild, sporadic
tinnitus was still there.
I spent this morning
mostly doing my French essay (as well as watching the last few episodes of
Season Cinco of T & E Awesome Show Great Job! and various other things that I
often do on Saturdays (eating cereal, doing ablutions, drinking coffee
that my dad made and eating the pastry that he had bought that morning, as he
often does on Saturdays or Sundays, staring out the window in the study, going
on Facebook for no reason, etc)) and my ear didn't improve. As soon as I had
gotten up, my dad had recommended that I phone up the Fox Valley Medical Centre
about my ear and book an appointment at 8 O'clock on the dot so I
could get in early. I did in fact carry out this recommendation, phoning them
up at precisely 8am (according to my mum's laptop, which was sitting on the
bench open), but the call went straight to their answering machine because, as
the recorded message informed me, they are not open on Saturdays. I should have
known this, of course, considering that the Fox Valley Medical Centre is a part
of the Sydney Adventist Hospital (or “San”), which is a Seventh Day
Adventist-run institution, and Seventh Day Adventists are those whackos who observe
the sabbath on a Saturday for fuck knows why and are also vegetarians, I think
(I am fairly sure of the latter fact because I used to always go to the San
Carols by Candlelight and always get the Nachos they sold and they were always
made with kidney beans instead of mince and I think my mum explained to me why
when I asked once). Anyway, after the Fox Valley Medical Centre plan fell
through, I had only one other medical option: the place at Hornsby. However, even
though I wasn’t aware that that practice doesn’t take bookings until about 11:30am
of this morning, when my mum told me, I didn't want to phone up or go there
because I couldn't be fucked and because I found it slightly daunting (I am
lazy and very shy).
My parents went out at
around 12, I think (I don't know where and I didn't ask). At that point, I knew
I had about an hour and a half till I had to leave for my soccer game (which
was at 3pm at St Johns Oval), and I resolved that I would try to finish my
French essay before I left. I slowly worked my way through the essay, and had
just reached the end of my third body paragraph at 1:12, I think it was,
when I suddenly realised that I had to start getting ready for my soccer
game. For the next 18 minutes, I frantically ran around the house gathering
underpants and my soccer gear, and then some shinpads, and then a water bottle,
and my wallet, and the car key. And then I was ready. I slipped into my Vans
for driving, and – with a water bottle, wallet and pair of car keys in hand – I
walked out of the door, then locked the door, then got into the car. Thereupon,
I realised I ought to check that the game I thought was on was in fact the one
on, not last week's game, and that I had got the time and ground right.
Therefore, cursing and self-castigating like an old trooper, I went back
towards the door, unlocked it, ran to my dad's (/the family's) Mac, frenetically
clicked on the mouse, found that he had turned the computer off (as per usual,
ever since he was told by some imbecile that leaving the previous one on too
long was one of the reasons for its failure), and then ran upstairs towards the
study and my laptop. I flipped up my bad boy's recently flipped-down lid,
rapidly entered the password (making sure I pressed the dodgy keys very hard
and verifying that they registered as black dots on the screen), and then, once
logged in, clicked on the fortunately still open Hotmail tab, found the
relevant Email, saw that the date was correct and that I had got the time and
ground right. I thus ran back to the car, hopped in, and began the slow and
torturous process of manoeuvring the Alfa – with its tiny fucking turning
circle – out of the top part of the driveway, where there were numerous
obstacles, including the Subaru, parked right next to it. Eventually, I completed
this and, after bumping my way over a felled, gibbous branch of one of those
weird Palm trees that our neighbours on the left planted, I was off. On my way,
from misery to happiness today. Listening to Tchaikovsky with one ear. And so
forth.
All was fairly
pleasant and uneventful until I emerged from the Lane Cove Tunnel and was
cruising along the M1 towards the city, whereupon I suddenly had the most
harrowing revelation: I DIDN’T PACK MY SOCCER BOOTS IN THE CAR. 'Shit', I thought,
'Just my fucking luck'. You see, this stuff seems to happen to me all the
fucking time. I am really no good at being an adult. Almost every time I have
gone to a soccer training or game, I have managed to fuck up in one way or
another. I am also chronically absentminded, and this is confirmed to me every time I
have to take multiple things to some event. God knows how many times over my
entire school career I forgot some important item and then either had to tell
my dad to turn around the car when we were already half-way to the station, or
get my mum to move heaven and earth for it to be delivered to me when I was already at school. Jesus. And my
dad has even tried to teach my how not to forget to take things. This is what made my forgetting of my soccer boots even more ignominiously
improbable: I was even cognisant of his main prescription, that I should make a
list of the stuff I needed in my head, when I was gathering my soccer stuff!
Yes, that's right, and I still didn't put the boots in the car! No wonder I
couldn't help thinking (and only half-facetiously) that, after all the bad luck
that seemed to plague me last year, God actually hated me, and was smiting me
once again. Either that, or I had a problem.
I quickly considered
not turning back and instead hedging my bets that someone would have a second
pair of boots. But I reasoned that even if Olly did bring two of his many pairs
of boots, they probably wouldn't fit, and despite the tremendous hassle it
would be heading back to Wahroonga, it was probably the only sensible option.
Given that I was on the M1, however, doing a U-turn was out of the question.
And so, with a mind now flooded with adrenaline, anger, frustration and various
other, more complex emotions, I knew I had to recalibrate my route fast. And so
I did. I decided to take the North Sydney exit, and thus headed into the
furthest left lane in anticipation of the exit. The clock was ticking, the
petrol gauge was looking more ominous, everything was bad.
Seeing as everything
was bad, I decided to try to think of ways of thinking that might console me. I
proposed that the farce I was currently embroiled in was perhaps
‘character-building’, finding the cliche grimly funny in the situation. ‘It is
the kind of thing that will make me who I am, who I am tomorrow will be a
legacy of this debacle,’ I said to myself, in a fine example of gallows humour.
Naturally, the logical part of me rejected these sentiments soon after they
came to me, and wondered aloud to myself what "character-building"
even meant. Nevertheless, my mind didn't produce many more interesting thoughts
than that (except the brief fancy that we probably live in a deterministic universe and I therefore had no choice in the matter, which I also dismissed). And yet, I still tried to console myself. I reasoned that it was
perhaps better that I wouldn't have to start the game, given that I was ill and
probably incapacitated in some way, and was probably lacking my normal stamina.
I also recognised that I probably wouldn't be vituperated by coach for my
lateness considering that I would be able to excuse myself (and he probably
wouldn't get angry even if I couldn't). These thoughts were slightly consoling, even though the idea that I had wasted
half an hour of driving and therefore petrol for nothing, and would waste another
half hour going back home in dense traffic, before heading all the way back out
again, was incalculably exasperating.
Anyhow, I eventually
made it back to Wahroonga a little after 2:30, according to the Alfa clock.
Once at 23 Strone Ave, I parked the car in the middle of the driveway, yanked
up the handbrake, turned the car off, sprinted towards the front door, unlocked
it, ran inside the house, picked up my boots, locked the door, then ran back
towards the car, threw the boots in, hopped in the driver's seat and began the
long manoeuvre out (I thought where I had parked would help me get out but I
was mistaken). Eventually, I was out of the driveway and back on the road,
ready for a frustrating journey back to the city, with a clock ticking towards
3 and a petrol gauge looking worse and worse.
It was 10 past 3 on
the Alfa clock when I finally reached Sydney Uni. I pulled up alongside the St
Johns gate, which I immediately saw was locked, and then looked at the field: to
my horror, no one was there. The nets weren't on the goals, and the place was
deserted. Completely empty. And about 50 metres away from me, I saw a sign:
"Oval closed".
'You are actually
kidding me, God,' I thought. I haven't bothered to charge my phone for the last
week or so, so maybe I would have known about the closure if I had been a
normal person, but this fact didn't in any way alleviate the almost cataclysmic
misfortune I felt. Fortunately, I was able to control my emotions, for the most
part. I decided that the worst moment had been the one where I realised I had
forgotten my boots, and that it was definitely good in some sense that I didn't
have to force my infirm body through any great strain. I was disturbed by the thought that my team might be playing
elsewhere, but I resolved to banish that from my mind. Nevertheless, one
terrible thought did persist: all the driving had been for nothing. Absolutely
nothing. All the stress, all the preparation, all the time, all the petrol, it
had all been totally pointless.
Even this was
surmountable, though, because I did have one idea for how to make the journey
not completely otiose: I would get some petrol and a packet of chips from the
servo twenty metres up the road. That way, I could at least feel that my
massive, arduous trip could almost have been a normal journey to the servo, for
a fill-up and a snack. It was not true, but the fantasy did console me,
somehow. And the drive back was actually quite nice, complemented nicely by the
Red Rock Deli Honey Soy Chicken chips and some soothing music.
But I still have a
fucked right ear.
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