Today I was reading Gordon’s blog and he posted about walking away from his notebook computer but having forgotten that his headphones were on and plugged into the computer. It damaged the headphone jack. That reminded me of something that happened to me a couple of years ago.
I have a set of earbuds that are like foam ear plugs. You squeeze them down and plug them into your head. As they expand they completely block out environmental noise. Then when you turn on your podcast player you have to make sure you turn the volume down really low, or you will blow out your ears.
One day I was wearing them while mowing the lawn. It is nice because they protect your ears from the lawnmower noise and you can still hear your podcast without turning the volume up too much. Like all life changing events, you tend to remember strange details. I was listening to Tom, Molly and Veronica from Buzz Out Loud as they discussed the Akismet spam blocker for Molly’s WordPress blog.
I caught the headphone chord with my hand and violently ripped the earbuds from my head. The way it happened though, I was instantly aware of the result but not the cause. The result was that all of a sudden my ears felt like someone used plungers to pop out my ear drums. I could no longer hear the podcast and this awful noise (lawnmower) was filling my head. I just knew my ears exploded for some un-explainable reason. It took a couple of seconds before I realized that I simply pulled on the chord wrong.
Scary times.