Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Call-sign... Ken "Q-Tip" Mizell... ?

Background:
This year I got probably the coolest Christmas present ever: a chance to be a fighter pilot for 2 days:
http://www.fightercombat.com/products/2_Day_Combination_Adventure_Package-8-1.html
Before I schedule my adventure, I must tell them what my "Call-Sign" will be.
The rules for this are simple:
1. You don't pick your call-sign, your buddies pick one for you
2. You won't like it.
3. It will make fun of you, your name, some prominent physical feature, or something stupid you have done...

example callsigns with their reasons:
www.f-16.net/callsigns.html
SO... with that said here's the story behind the current forerunner in the Call-Sign debate...

Ken “Q-Tip” Mizell

In the search for a call-sign for my fighter pilot experience… my family thinks I'm Ken "Q-Tip" Mizell
… so.. there was this incident... when I was 19...
I was home on a Sunday afternoon at my parents’ house, with my little sister Amy.

I was in the bathroom getting ready and cleaning my ears with a q-tip, when she comes in and says "you shouldn’t do that. You should never stick something smaller than your finger in your ear..."

Since I’m a smartass and ‘obviously smart enough to know how to clean my ears’… of course I'm like, "yeah like I'm really gonna poke my eardrum out, Yeah right... " I placed the Q tip in my right ear and took my flattened hand away from my face... then made a slapping motion to the side of my face (while looking at her in the mirror - and planning on having the Q-Tip go between my thumb and my fingers but making her see in the mirror the near miss) for about 3 or four nanoseconds I thought “This is gonna be hilarious, and will totally freak my sister out…”

oops…

thumb hit the end of the Q-Tip

“OUCH!”

I started shaking my head sideways, the Q-Tip was still stuck in there. I pulled it out and it had this bloody pink and white chunk on it, and I said, "Oh My God - is that my brains?!"

No, it was just earwax, but it freaked me the F___K out.

Now my sister is laughing and astonished at me, as I’m bleeding from my ear and it sounds like a freight train is blowing the loudest whistle ever (my auditory nerve was exposed). I couldn’t hear anything, it hurt.

My little sister wasn’t driving age yet, and no one was home. So we go to the neighbors house, and have them drive me to the ER.

I sat there on a bed in the ER. There was just a bunch of curtains between rows of beds, so I was looking around and I saw a Bellevue High football Jersey on a guy who's arm looks like a W.

I was trying to see if I know the guy since that was my school.

He was about 20 feet away. Then I heard someone whispering "ken"
to my left

"... ken"

So I turned left

…and I turned more left

…and I turned even more left

…and more until I got up off the bed and turned all the way around to see the doctor standing right next to my right ear.

He was trying not to laugh at me. "Yep you definitely punctured your right eardrum." He told me to go see an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat Dr.) the next morning.

So I go, and meet this guy with a thick German accent who says "I Sink I can Fieex sis wiss a butterfly bandage.. but I vant to first put un some Novocain OK?"

“OK”

He then squirted in Novocain... using his super tiny needle-nose pliers to apply a bandaid and pull the two flaps of my eardrum together and put the band-aid on. I said thanks and I started to head home (I drove myself to his office).

About 1/2 way home the road I'm was driving on rotated, like half of a barrel roll in an airplane. It rolls in front of me up and to the left until it appeared vertical. The road was vertical in front of my car, if I go to the left I go up, to the right I go down and I fall off the side of the Earth.

It seemed to me that gravity was broken, pulling the wrong direction, gravity was now sideways.

I then realized that I was holding my head sideways in the car too, to try and lean left so I wouldn’t fall out of the car and off the face of the Earth.

Apparently the Novocain got into the inner ear where equilibrium is managed. I barely made it home... parked... took two steps out of the car... and puked everything I'd eaten for a week… Then I think my asshole sucked back up some poop I’d pooped before that so I could puke some more...

I’d never puked so much. I crawled into bed and slept for 7 hours, only getting up to puke.

Today I have most of my hearing back, but I still can’t hear sounds higher pitch than 17kHz in my right ear, or sounds related to me needing to do yard work or finish projects I started…

Hence - Ken "Q-Tip" Mizell

No comments: