I got my hearing aids last week. I didn’t want to get hearing aids but I had no choice. I couldn’t hear anything. Well, not anything, but I was missing a lot of conversation…directed at me…or missing the punch lines to jokes…or overhearing juicy gossip. I told my housemate that the only reason I’m getting hearing aids is for my work at the bookstore. Uh, no, that’s not the only reason, she said, and began listing all the non-work examples including dinner table conversation with her. Well, I suppose. And wanting captions on movies at the theater. (They are whispering when they talk? No, Jim, they’re not whispering.)
But I really didn’t want to get them. Can’t people at work accommodate me by talking louder? Jim, they’d say, even when we do that you don’t hear us. The worst is on the phone. I ask people if they can please speak up, and they do and I still can’t understand what they’re saying. But until now I could use a little trick. I would put the person on hold and call out “Can someone get line three?” and walk away, hoping someone else could hear what the caller said.
The eureka moment (in reverse) when I had no choice but to get hearing aids was when I was standing behind the counter and repeatedly asking if she could speak up. Four colleagues behind the counter (and I think six customers) all turned to me at the same time and said, “Great Gatsby! She wants Great Gatsby.”
Yes, okay, I’ll get hearing aids. So I got fitted at Scripps and two weeks later I had the little techs to stick in my ears, and they seemed so blasted fragile to have cost so much money. (It’s a worthwhile investment, a friend said. Well, can you pay for them then?)
I love/hate my new hearing aids. At dinner, I commented on now much our corgi, Penny, panted, and I could hear her walking around the house, stopping to drink water, go out the dog door, etc. Is she always that loud? No, that’s the way it has always been. I can hear Brian Williams without captions!
Everyone at work is absolutely thrilled. Someone asked me a question while I was working on a project and, when I immediately answered, she was almost jumping up and down with glee. You heard me! You heard me! Was it that bad about my hearing? Yes, yes! And darn, I can’t turn phone calls over to someone else…It’s the new Jim Stewart!
Over the Sunday paper I was chatting with my roommate and she said something funny, and I pretended I could hear her, nodding my head seemingly at the right time.
So I put my hearing aids on.
