Just a harmless whistle....

This past Saturday night, a friend ruptured my eardrum.

You see, I went back to college five years ago, and to help support myself, I started a small karaoke business. Most Friday and Saturday nights I'm in one small-town bar or another, aiding and abetting the vandalism of many a great hit song. This past Saturday night, at one of my regular gigs, one of my regular singers decided it was too quiet and let out a shrill, high-pitched, extremely loud, excruciatingly painful whistle. You know the kind, with two fingers in the mouth, intended to be heard across football stadiums over 90,000 screaming fans. That kind of loud.

The first time she let out one of her obnoxious sirens, it literally knocked me breathless. I yelled into the microphone, half-jokingly, to quit it, she was making my ears bleed!

In truth, I discovered just a few short minutes later, she really did make one of my ears bleed. My left ear started to ooze a very small amount of blood, mixed with some sort of clear-ish fluid. Still ringing, and a bit numb, the bleeding and oozing stopped very quickly.