Battle Scar

Only four hours of sleep last night. Why? Well, obsessing about my cancerous ear and the looming removal of the same. More specifically, my friend, Christoph, had mentioned, on a positive note, that it might look like the battle badge of an old soldier, and that the ladies love stuff like that. Hey, right!, I said. I can say that it got shot off in the 'Nam whilst I was heroically saving my entire platoon. So this, really, is where the obsession came in, with trying to picture how I would get just part of my ear shot off. I kept trying to think of how this would happen, without the bullet going through my head as well. Of course, I could say that the bullet did enter the head but was stopped by the metal plate already in my head, but that tended to merely compound the lie and lead to another. So how would a bullet remove just part of one's ear, leaving the rest of the head uninjured? It would have to be an awfully lucky shot (or an unlucky one, depending upon the viewpoint you choose--that of the target or of the shooter). Then again, perhaps this could be a shrapnel injury. A grenade had exploded nearby and a single fragment had caught the ear. That sounded more likely. And in any case, collateral damage to the head could be hidden by the hair. With this much decided, I began to put together the background story--how had it happened, in what part of Vietnam, in which battle? Was I a Marine or a Regular Army soldier? Or part of a CIA team? Special Operations? A Green Beret? The more I thought about it, the more complicated it became, and the less able I was to sleep--such that at this point I'd most like to just be done with the ear altogether.  One adjusts to reality rather quickly but is kept in a nervous, unsettled state by things that are merely potential.