Can you hear me now?

I was firmly convinced that I am going deaf and I still think that one day that will come true. Grandpa wore hearing aids, uncle Joe wears them now, my dad wears them and having just bought a motorcycle and riding it around even with ear plugs in, I am always thinking about what i am missing out on. So today I went to the hearing aid specialist not for hearing aids, but to get a set of custom made ear plugs made to wear while on the motorcycle so I can preserve and keep what little hearing i thought I had left. The very nice specialist took one peek in my ears and told me that I had 90% blockage on one side and 95% on the other. EWWWWWW! They have to clean your ears out before they pour liquid latex in to made the impression of your ear canal to make the plugs from. Well he was amazed I could hear anything at all and did a test with a tuning fork and I could only hear it from about 6-9 inches away from my ear when he rang it. I wont go into the gross details, but after cleaning out the one side I could hear the tuning fork from almost 3 feet away when he rang it. much better now! I do have an excuse though. I do a good job cleaning the outer area's of my ears, but I have always had a thing about sticking anything smaller than your finger into your ear. Probably comes from watching old gangster movies as a kid when they would stick an ice pick in your ear with dramatically bad results. So now i have to wait till Friday for my poor ears to recover from the extreme cleaning session and then I will go back to get the ear plugs so i can protect my new found super hearing ablities.