I never answer the phone on the Fourth of July. A few years ago, I only had one phone line, no assistants and would take as many as seventy calls a day for my law practice. I would usually do well on about sixty of them. We went down to Carlsbad Caverns for the fourth, and someone kept calling and calling and calling and calling about a legal issue. He wanted me to call the judge that very instant.
With every call, I kept pressing the phone to my ear with frustration, and I found that I could hear less and less. That person called a fourth time asking the same question on the Fourth and I just exploded like a firework ...
"It's the fourth of July," I said. "The courts are closed."
He hung up and didn't call again. A short while later, I found that I couldn't hear things in my left ear. It was as if a wall had gone up over my ear and there was only a single opening. When I went to a restaurant that night, all the sound seemed to go through that opening like flood water going through a hole in a dike.
It didn't get better. A few days later, I went to a doctor who removed ear wax from my ear. Essentially, by pressing the phone down for the last few months that the wax essentially blocked my ear canal. She removed pieces of wax the size of earthworms.
I could hear again . . .
It was as if God was telling me to respect the sanctity of the holiday.
The phone has already rung this morning, but I didn't pick it up.
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