Last week, I saw my friend getting out of his green Caddy, and he had his head wrapped up in what looked like a big white turban. I didn't have time to talk to him, and it wasn't until yesterday, almost a week later, I finally got a chance to say hello. He had replaced the turban with an elastic band around his head that covered most of his ears.
He told me that he had his ears cut off and replaced flat against his head to celebrate his twentieth birthday. He'd always worried that his ears stuck out too far and decided to have them fixed. He went to a local plastic surgeon that performed the operation at a small private hospital.
He said they gave him a local anesthesia, and he spent the entire operation gazing up into the greenest and most beautiful eyes of the doctor's assistant nurse. Her eyes took his mind off the noise of the cutting the doctor was doing on his ears.
He said he didn't stay in the hospital after the operation because he believed the brochure that described the procedure as quick and easy and as an outpatient operation. However, once he got back to his little apartment, and the anesthesia wore off, the swelling began, and the pain and drumming started for real. He described how he'd laid in his cot and suffered for three days, until finally, desperate, he'd removed the bandages and relieved the pressure on his swollen ears.
He said he now had a new and different idea what the words stoic and tough meant. He took off the ace bandage that he was wearing and showed me the result of his pain and suffering.
His ears were pinned back against the sides of his head. You look okay, better I said, but told him I did not remember his ears sticking out.
