You know how sometimes people are a little different, physically? And I'm talking a really really tiny thing. For example, one of David's ears is slightly pointed. I think a lot of people have those differences, something that just developed oddly. I personally have one of my little toes that is shaped a little weird, different than the other one. David said it was cute when I worried and compared it to Gus Gus, the mouse from Cinderella.
Some things shouldn't be said.
Also, some people have genetic variations of these oddities. On my mother's side of the family, they have what they call the "Grossnickle ear," Grossnickle being the family name. One ear is normal, the other one tends to stick straight out to the side. It's endearing to everyone who doesn't have it, and frustrating to those who do.
I like my ears. They are small, laid back. The lobe is small and detached. Overall, I'm pretty happy. However, there is one thing that is really annoying, and that is the size of my ear canals. I don't know if this counts as a developmental oddity or a genetic oddity, or just the extreme side of the normal range, but I don't like it.
First off, I also have waxy ears. Narrow ear canals combined with waxy ears means that plugs have built up and need to be flushed and can affect my hearing.
Narrow canals can retain water easier and I've had "swimmer's ear" before.
I have had very little luck with ear plugs.
And now this.
Some people complained about Apple's earbuds. Supposedly, they were modeled off of Steve Job's ear, which seems like a somewhat pretentious thing to do, but they were my favorite. They fit me perfectly. My first pair started pulling the cord out of the connections and I managed to finagle another pair from product replacement when my iPod broke. When the second pair finally wore out, I went to the Apple website and discovered it was around $40 to replace them. I went to Wal-Mart and got a $15 pair of white headphones that could maybe fool people. Also, I liked white because my hair is so dark people might not see black cords and then talk to me and think I was rude or something for ignoring them.
I've had that pair of white off-brand headphones ever since. It's got to be like six or so years. They hurt my ears originally, but either my ears got used to them, or I don't listen to music on a device as much. I also use them for running. Until they shorted out two days ago.
I'm still using Zombies, Run! for running and it's a stereo sound system, meaning if someone in the story is talking to me over the radio, it comes in mostly right ear, and if someone is running with me, it's more central, but also somewhat left ear. Well, the right ear shorted out. I can't have that.
So I went to Best Buy and discovered that apparently, the cool thing with earbuds are the plug style. I've had about as much luck with that as with regular ear plugs and so generally avoid them. But there was only one style that wasn't plugs and it was cheap-o. I was thinking along the $20 range and those were like $5. And the Skullcandy ones looked really cool... I ended up getting a pair of $20 Skullcandy ones with a red cord. They come with smaller size plugs as well and I was hoping...
Yeah, they don't work. My ears are too stupidly small. I spent half of my run shoving them back in my ears, my ears feel weird now. A few times I was able to hit that sweet spot where the stereo doesn't seem like it's running in each ear, but in the middle of your head and I realized these headphones have bass ranges that my old ones could never achieve, but after ten seconds they would start to slip again. It makes me sad.
Pros: Look sweet, have great sound, have microphone/remote, noise blocking
Cons: Doesn't fit, noise blocking
Yeah, I don't like my music leaking all over the place and I was able to turn my cell phone down another three volume steps because I could actually hear, but one of the nice things about not having noise blocking headphones is the ability to hear cars moving, doors slamming, people, etc. When you're running, sometimes those things are important. I usually always look before doing anything, so not too bad...
Dang it. I just want them to work. I wrote customer service at Skullcandy to see if they make even smaller ones. Well see.
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