My Ears Haven’t Always Looked Like This

“THOSE EARS, WHAT SPECIES ARE THOSE?”

YES, THIS COMMENT WAS REFERRING TO ME.  

I know, I know.  You are not supposed to pay attention to comments from internet trolls.  But, sometimes it’s impossible not to – especially when the comments are personal.  In fact, it’s almost addictive in a strange, self-deprecating way.

About a month ago, two videos I filmed for Wired Magazine’s Basic Instinct series aired on their YouTube channel.  One was titled, “How to Start a Fire in a Survival Situation” and the other “How to Make Stone Tools in a Survival Situation.”  These videos were professionally shot and edited with Conde Nast’s top notch team. After screening the final cuts, I was really proud of the information I delivered and I couldn’t wait for the videos to release.  To date there are well over a million views with over 4,000 comments combined on the two videos! That may seem like a really engaged audience, however, very few of the comments are actually related to the actual content.  In fact, the vast majority have to do with Minecraft and, about 100 are directed towards my ears.

Yes, that’s right, there are 100 comments about my ears on primitive fire and stone tool videos!

It is somewhat ironic and timely that while the trolls completely missed the point of the videos, the focus of their cruel comments relate directly to my mission building nourishing, connected relationships with food…

In fact, a lot of hard work went into these ears and, believe it or not, I actually used to be proud of them.  They were a badge of honor at a time in my life when I ignorantly believed it was worth harming my body to resemble my athlete role models.  My cauliflower ears are a result of years of intensive training wrestling in High School at Red Bank Regional, the Division I program at The Ohio State University and the Division III program at The College of New Jersey.  Cauliflower ear is a condition wrestlers, boxers, rugby players, and MMA fighters get when their ears experience trauma and become deformed through the production of hematomas and the ripping away of skin from the cartilage.  Often the afflicted ears need to be drained and sometimes require surgery. I have needed both, including a month-long stint in the middle of the 1992-1993 wrestling season when my ear needed to be drained every day after practice. 

As a side note – this ALL could have been prevented by wearing protective headgear.

Today, my ears serve as permanent remnants of my wrestling career and a time when I had a very unhealthy relationship with food. 

Thankfully, through a more recent connection with my food, and truly nourishing my body, I have been able to erase all the other physical vestiges of the unhealthy relationships with food that plagued me for a significant part of my life.

I break down the various relationships with food during my life into four categories:

1. As an overweight kid, to me food was something that made me ugly and caused other kids to make fun of me.  It resulted in a poor body image that still plagues me to this day.
2. As an athlete my body transformed, but as a wrestler, food was something that prevented me from making weight and, frankly, food scared me.
3. After my college wrestling career was over, the weight came back on, quickly, and I suffered from metabolic syndrome.  At this point in my life, food was something that once again made me ugly and now also made me sick.
4. Today, I enjoy a connected relationship with where my food comes from, how my ancestors ate, the great diversity of traditional approaches around the world, and how to prepare food, using ancient and traditional approaches to feed myself and my family the safest, most nourishing diets possible.  For the first time in my life food is something that nourishes me and makes me healthy. 

It may seem to you like a stretch to equate my large, deformed, sticky-out ears with a nourishing diet, but not to me.  They are a constant, daily reminder each time I look into the mirror of a time when I was sick, malnourished, and disconnected.  And, what’s most absurd about all of it is that it was at a time in my life when I should have been enjoying the best health possible!  After all, I was in my teens and twenties, vibrant, and dedicated. I was surrounded by doctors, nutritionists, dieticians, and coaches.  I should have been at my peak. But, that wasn’t the case. Instead, it is today that I enjoy a healthy relationship with food and, at 47 years old am healthier than I have ever been in my entire life.

THE MORALE OF THE STORY?  WELL, THERE ARE SEVERAL…

1. It is never too late to improve your health and, the most powerful way to accomplish the best health ever is to connect with your food, shorten your food chain, and cook from scratch using traditional approaches to food that make it as safe and nourishing as possible.
2. Wear your headgear.
3. Don’t pay attention to internet trolls.

And, if you need a laugh, below I have cut and pasted the comments from the videos that are directed towards my ears:

• He said:?o.o?
• He is the only person I have ever seen with ears like this except me
• bill do be looking like a monkey doe
• I like how he, himself looks like primate.
• 1:34 there’s Mickey Mouse on the rock
• Dude your Ears give you +10 to Perception right?
• Can we talk about how much of a unit his ears are?
• lol who else thought this guy looked like a ork or a troll
• Ears
• his ears is the reason you cut your hair
• I can’t take his ear seriously ?????
• Ears
• he does kind of look like a humanlike monkey
• I bet the man can hear people walking through the wall of china with those ears
• Monkey.
• I bet he can hear well.
• ngl he looks a bit like a monkey
• Them ears
• Ears
• Ears
• Legend says Bill Schindler ears were so enormous that he could hear the Earth’s core.
• his ears
• This guy has really realistic shaders
• bro those ears
• Nobody gonna say anything about his dumbo ears?
• he still hasn’t evolved i can tell because of the size of his ears lol
• I dont know why i keep looking at his big elf ears lol
• those ears, what species are those ?
• Nobody gonna mention his ears?
• his ears look like hes still living in the stone age
• He definitely has the ears of a primate.
• Cant see anything, his ears keep getting in the way
• I like your ears
• look at them ears
• Survivale tricks 1. Have big ears like elephant
• Are we gonna talk about how he look like a goblin?
• he has funny ears :^
• I like his ears though.
• He be dissing the human body, yet he can literally fly away with those ears.
• His ears tho
• This man look like a cave man
• HIS EARS PEOPLE he looks like an ogor fresh out of shreck 9
• Mans ears???????? ? ??
• dude looks like he uses echolocation to move around his house
• Those shaders look cool!!!!!!
• How far can you ear with those ears
• His ears are sharper than the stone thingy
• Dam dem ears prehistoric
• seems like he can hear anything
• I like his ears 🙂
• nice ear´s dude
• that dude can fly with his ears easily
• Dem ears tho
• Who got the elf
• Nice ears.
• What dose ears do
• you xcan fly with your ear to next sivilaton
• this guy looks like a wingnut
• Jonh cena big ears
• Are you a survivalist elf
• dumbo is that you?
• he looks like a chimp
• E A R S
• Is no one gonna talk about this guys ears?
• Them ears tho
• His ears are freaking me out a little
• This man looks like hes done some wrestling  …
• If this dude ran too fast, his ears would act like airplane wings and he would take flight
• My guy said ???
• He looks like dumbo the elephant
• All I see is Santa’s Elf…
• Wow look at those ears, they look like they have their own blood supply system
• nice ears
• How to look like a monkey with arms and ears
• You know he has 20/20 hearing ?
• Those ears make him look like he belongs in the wilderness.
• Rad cauliflower ear, where’s Dr. Bill train?
• It will sound mean, but he looks like a gorilla… (I don’t want to offend anyone) but yeah he does and he also makes stone tools
• bruh why his ears larg
• By the looks of this guys ears – I bet he is also good in BJJ
• My dude has super big ears
• He has monkey ears
• He looks like Leonard Nimoy’s rugged brother!
• Which brings me to my next point: don’t wrestle without headgear.
• is no one going talk about how he have a gigantic ear
• Guy definitely has cauliflower ear
• Cauliflower ears detected. This man can also fight.
• Dude looks like an MMA fighter (ears)
• Rip my ears
• This man looks like hes done some wrestling
• the ears gave it away ; cool video
• You can’t start a fire with your bare hands you need wood etc ,can you ? Flappy lugs .
• This guy can whisper in his own ear ?️?
• dude this guy can move his ears fuckin awesome man
• He has cauliflower ear
• Pretty sure this guy is a boxer or MMA fighter or something, his ears look kinda cauliflowerd.
• Looks like a tough dude.
• Was he a boxer? Why does he have cauliflower ear.