According to something I read somewhere, the top song on the day I was born was “The Sound of Silence,” by Simon and Garfunkel.

The first time I went to a neurologist, she asked if I had tinnitus. I have seen the commercials with William Shatner, and I know that if you have tinnitus, you hear ringing and clanging and whistles, so I said that no, I did not have tinnitus.

She turned around and wrote something on my chart, and then I said, “I just have that normal waves crashing on the beach sound that everybody hears.”

She turned back around and said, “That’s not normal. Why didn’t you tell somebody?”

I just said, “I thought everybody was hearing it. Is everybody not hearing it?”

And it turned out that I was the only one at the beach all day, every day, and I do have tinnitus. So she prescribed something that made the waves go away.

For the longest time, I kind of missed being at the beach and marveled at how people got along listening to car horns honking and random people having outbursts and the various other aural intrusions we all suffer on the regular.

It occurs to me that there is irony in the number one song on the day I was born being “The Sound of Silence” and the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced complete silence in my entire life.

I guess life is funny like that.