I decided to be more creative this year and all I got was a lousy ear infection.

Turns out I’m not just super smart, I’m too super smart for my own good.

I know, I’m as shocked as you are. It never occurred to me that one could be too smart, though all modesty aside, if anyone ever was, I would be an obvious candidate for that label.

Now just how did I come to this epiphany?

The usual way:

A long period of inexplicable bubbling, hissing sounds with no obvious source but that came off as the blob from that 50’s horror movie sneaking up on me, followed by the psych ward, and then, after a psych referral, by a visit to my increasingly long-suffering doctor.

But first, you know how too much traipsing about at high-speed in running shoes can lead to fungal infections on your feet?

No, apparently it’s true! I may not have much direct experience with this ‘exercise’ thing or its common side effects, but I’m reliably informed the above is a real thing. Something to do with heat, sweat, moisture, itchiness, and stench-ridden shoes.

We live in a strange, cruel world.

Also, one where healthy people need to buy new shoes more often than they’d like.

Or do.

Seriously. I’m looking at you, Leo! Either buy a new pair of shoes or stop standing so close to me! That smell? Hurting me!

Jeez!

Well, after my little tête-à-tête with a non-psychiatric representative of the medical establishment, I am forced to conclude that the same thing is true from running your brain too much.

Yes, that’s right, I have an ear infection. Confirmed by a doctor, no less. An actual doctor! Of medicine!

I have been struck, in the prime of my life, just on the downward side of the flower of my youth, with Athlete’s Ear.

Tragedy of the highest order.

Now my doctor didn’t call it Athelete’s Ear. Possibly because diagnosis of the disease is so dreaded, but more likely because he wanted to impress me with his expertise, he went with the medical term for it: a fungal infection.

Actually, he used an even more medical-ly term, Otto-is-my-psychosis or something along those lines, but hey, I had an ear crammed full of fungus when he said it, so it was hard to hear properly.

That’s right. The fungus gets all up in your ear canal, blocks things up, and causes pressure differentials that lead to fluid hissing and bubbling from your Eustachian tube, in, through, and beyond the ear drum, and into the ear canal.

Athlete’s Ear looks like this, only with the ants deeper in the ear and being immobile white fuzz instead of ants. Not shown: disgusting yellow gobs of ear wax.

So my fears about an invisible blob stalking me turned out to be unfounded. Ha ha, I was only committed for three days for believing that. Good times…

Here’s the important bit, the proof I’m too smart part: the medication prescribed for me to drip into my ear to stop the fungus and return me to a decent quality of life? Normally used to treat Athlete’s Foot. But in extreme cases when the lives of important people such as myself are on the line, it can also be used “off label” in a last-ditch effort to treat what I like to call “extreme academic illnesses” such as mine.

(There was also some tiny-vacuum-cleaner-in-the-ear-so-don’t-move-your-head-at-all moments, but they were unpleasant and I don’t like to talk about them.)

What this all boils down to is that either my return to writing has been exercising my brain too much or I’ve strained my hearing muscles due to indulging a little too much in a repast of loud, fast noise.

Since my ear muscles aren’t bulging with newfound bulk, and as it is a well established fact that I only sample speed metal while encased in a sound proof cask a minimum of two kilometers from the source¹, I’ve clearly been thinking too hard of late.

Ergo, it is my brain that is overworking, leading me to be super smart while generating enough heat and moisture and shoe-stench to encourage fungus to grow inside my ear.²

Ah, the fruits of my mental labors.³

¹ Citation needed (other than this one)
² I suppose another likely explanation is that an invisible alien blob sprayed its spores in my ear, and those spores grew tendrils which reached into and networked with my brain, increasing my thinking power, but as that would mean I’ll go back to being stupid once the infection is clear, I choose not to embrace this theory.
³ Not actual fruits. While (probably) non-toxic, do not attempt to eat ear fungus! Also, do not taunt ear fungus!