NOTES from the ALLEY #6
Maybe it IS all in my head...
in no particular order…
i. EXPLODING HEAD SYNDROME - it’s real and it’s exhilarating!
As I like to say: How do you know you’re asleep unless you wake up screaming?
And while that’s enormously entertaining for everyone involved, more recently, I’ve been startling awake to the sound of piercing yells, cymbals crashing, and balloons popping.
Just more proprietary Ford lunacy? Not a bit.
It’s called Exploding Head Syndrome (EHS), or, episodic cranial sensory shock, and apparently, sufferers report gunshots, bells, screams, banging doors—all manner of delightfully unnerving noises that might explain any number of hauntings through the ages—usually just as one is falling asleep. Joy!
It’s not dangerous, but it’s also not as cool as that scene in Kingsman where all the bads’ heads explode in a kaleidoscopic fit of cinematic karma.
Stress? Oh my, yes, LOTS—mostly imaginary—but I don’t think that’s the cause.
It started when I went on and then off a medication that caused me intense vertigo, and again since I’ve gone on and off another substitute med that also made me dizzy.
It’s definitely not my “periode.”
Long story short, I’m having fun trotting out my EHS (self-)diagnosis over brunch to gasps of incredulity and nervous laughter—it’s all shockingly on-brand for me, old “Sharks in the Swimming Pool” Ford, at it again.
It should dissipate after a few months, but I’m hoping it lasts through the holidays.
ii. More about my periode.
Just to reiterate: anecdotal evidence to the contrary, I do not have a monthly cycle. Not that I didn’t want one as a child.
My mother had severe women’s health issues, and despite a hysterectomy at 23, once dragged me with her to the doctor because, as she explained afterward, she “got her period.”
Impossible, of course, yet this simple misunderstanding presaged years of confusion around How Things Worked in the field of ladies’ plumbing.
You see, I assumed, very astutely, her visit involved the doctor’s pricking her with a needle so that a single drop of blood would appear on her skin, you know, like the period at the end of this sentence. To what end was unclear, I was just happy to be using my 1st grade punctuation in real world situations.
I remember the day so vividly—the glorious SoCal sun, the sticky vinyl backseat of my mother’s Ford Pinto—and at our second stop, the bank, I had a solid half hour waiting out in the parking lot to imagine the ghastly procedure.
In that toasty deathtrap, windows cracked—oh, stop, it was the 70s—groggy and hallucinatory, I pictured the needle puncturing her skin, over and over, and felt by proxy, again and again, a stabbing sensation crawling up and down my six-year-old body, as though my mother were my own voodoo doll. I had seen that episode of Scooby Doo; I knew how these things worked.
(That’s called “mirror pain” BTW, and I get it still, especially with descriptions of injuries to fingers and toes, inexplicably translated to momentary flashes of blindness and squeamish protest. Phantom freak-outs were a hallmark of my childhood—see “BALLOONS”—which continue unabated even now.)
Later that day, I decorated my finger with a magic marker to show her that I, too, had got my period.
My gallant display of solidarity was met with considerable bewilderment, but not, of course, any more accurate information.
iii. Bonsai!
Have you heard of Uncle Bonsai? They are a Seattle folk trio formed in 1981, and although I’ve lost track of them more recently, I often find myself singing their ditties in the bath, especially this children’s song:
O.o
I can totally see you marking your finger with a tiny red periode in solidarity with your mom! HAHA! BTW: nobody believes the Uncle Bonsai girls slept in seperate bunks.
Another brillian stack Troy 👌
I’m glad everyone is here now so I can discuss my ailments, too.
EHS. Yes, me, too -- and not pleasant and not funny. LOUD gunshot. It sent me racing for WebMD. I’ve only had it A few other times, but I remember thinking if this starts to happen a lot it’s going to be a life-changing issue. All this post is going to do is have me up at, say, 3:19 in the morning worried I’m living next to a firing range, e.g., this post. I’d totally stopped thinking about it until you started running around in the street waving your handgun.
Related Health issue #2. Very brief. Tinnitus. I have it too. [Editor’s note: we were able to cut this paragraph significantly.]
Related Health Issue #4. Starting while falling asleep. During a time of extreme professional stress, I started to startle as I was falling asleep at the SLIGHTEST noise. I’ll get to how slight momentarily. But, first imagine Scrooge being awoken/awakened/awokened (it’s now 3:27)... Scrooge being the previous word by the Ghost of Christmas Past. I wave my arms in the air as I startle. I make a whelping sound that defies both direct language and metaphor. Then I either shoot up in the bed or lie there victimized like one of those patients in the same room as you at the hospital who never speaks and you know they are a short timer. Where was I going with that? Hmmm. 3:31 AM
Yes! The wife and children! The wife and children walk around me and make the SLIGHTEST noise and I startle. I mean someone sets a kettle down in the next county, and I fly I to the air.
Oh! And then I yell at them for making a sound while I’m in the liminal transition [Editor: I give up] This can get REALLY BAD. And it feeds on itself. The more you startle, the more you tense up, the more you startle. I’ve yelled at the Ghost of Xmas Past. [Editor: it is the Ghost of Xmas 🎄 Future that you don’t want to be yelling at.]
This has been heavily edited for clarity.
Earlier today I read that no post should be longer than 1000 words. As this is wildly unachievable for me, but a legitimate criticism of my 5500-7500 word posts, I have decided to keep my Comments under the 1000 word count threshold.
But... any response to this by anyone including the 👻 of Past and Future will reset my word clock to 0. It is 3:45 in the morning and I would like to discuss toenail wrinkling. If someone will even ask something as simple as “what is toenail wrinkling it will reset the shot clock.
It is 3:46AM in Brooklyn New York, and I can wait all night.
Finally, my children do impressions of me startling and then they get my wife involved and this can go on for a long time, somewhat like this