As we know, actor William Shatner was nearly driven to suicide by chronic, maddening tinnitus. He reports being on the brink of personal annihilation before he finally found a therapy that helped him. Many people chuckled over this news. Oh that Shatner, they said, always with the histrionics, still chewing the scenery after all these years. But I can totally sympathize, I think that's the kind of thing that could drive me around the bend too. When I was a kid I drove my mother bananas one summer because I became convinced that my eyelashes were obstructing my vision. I yanked the longer ones and groomed the others, trying to sort of curl them out of the way. While she was trying to talk to me I was always rolling my eyes around, trying to catch glimpses of those telltale dark shadows in the corners of my field of vision. She'd try to ignore the distracting tics of this crazy-eyed child in front of her who was seemingly going out of his way to find something to be troubled by, she'd hold her tongue as long as she could then interrupt herself and scream "GodDAMMIT will you stop looking at your own eyelashes, STOP STOP STOP STOP!"