"You can have them chopped off. But it’s very painful and takes a long time. I’d sooner not hear what you’re saying.”
There are two medical conditions that mark serious surfers: pterygium and external auditory canal exostoses better known as “surfer’s eye” and “surfer’s ear.” They are, both, uncomfortable but also the marks of a serious surfer so worn with small pride. The surfer with pterygium looking perpetually stoned as his eyelid grinds like sandpaper over his eyeball. The surfer with exostoses cupping a hand around ear trying not to miss the entire conversation around the dinner table. Each making a little show so others know what they have sacrificed to live the serious surfer life.
Well, the British comedian Harry Enfield recently bragged, publicly, about his surfer’s ear. Appearing on the Off Menu podcast, the 65-year-old declared, “I’m deaf, partially deaf. And because I swim in Highgate Ponds, I’ve got stalactites in my ears. You can have them chopped off. But it’s very painful and takes a long time. I’d sooner not hear what you’re saying.”
Surfers, of course, use “drilling” instead of “chopping off” and have you ever been drilled?
Doctors recommend seeing a hearing specialist, first, in order to determine if the situation can be left alone or if a hearing aid might help but a canalplasty, or drilling, is usually the go-to treatment.
After the procedure, serious surfers must stay out of the water for between six and eight weeks. It is advised, during that time, he or she tell everyone from the person in line at coffee shop to the neighbor way down the street that the reason he or she is not surfing, is because of the drilling.
Opening lines might include:
“Sure wish I could get wet, today, but just got drilled…”
“Man, I just got drilled so have to stay out of the water for a month…”
“Argh, I’d be out there but I just got drilled…”
“Can you repeat that? I just got drilled…”
Pterygium is, of course, the more preferable as everyone can see the core-ness without it needing to be explained.
As you were.