Your princess is in another castle

I know it's early, but as far as self-inflicted injuries go, I'm going to go ahead and give myself an early nomination for The 2007 Stupidest Self-Inflicted Injury Award.

The Pittsburgh Penguins and Florida Panthers deadlocked at 1-1 heading into overtime. You have to understand that scoring was very hard to come by. So when Colby Armstrong beat Eddie Belfour top shelf on the short side, I was extremely excited—So excited in fact that I started shouting, jumping around, flailing my fists, and shaking my head.

The result was a direct blow to my right ear, which rang for about 20 minutes and subsequently felt like it was packed with wax (moreso than usual).

I was relieved to find I could still hear out of the ear, but when I pinched my nose and blew out, the result was a pathetic little whistling noise (my wife later confided that she was up for an hour or two in bed laughing at me as my ear whistled in my sleep).

I knew I'd ruptured my eardrum, and I went to the doctor the next day hoping to get some antibiotics to fight off any impending infections. Doc Bentz explained that the only way this could have happened was if my fist made a perfect vacuum over my ear. It turns out pulling it away from the vacuum is what caused the perforation (Million-to-one shot, doc. Million-to-one...). He then proceeded to prescribe me one of the following three courses of treatment:

A. Amoxicillin
B. Penicillin
C. Shower Cap

Yep.

So, what's embarrassing about all of this…

A. I hit myself in the ear.
B. I was NOT drunk.
C. I was not on any other kind of mood/mind-altering substance (unless you consider orange juice to be a mood/mind-altering substance).
D. I was able to hit myself in an extremely and profoundly rare manner.
E. Now, when I shower, I look like this.



Next time the Penguins go to overtime, I'm going to make sure I have a goddamn beer in my hand.