Plastic brings the world into focus

(February 10) - It’s a squeaky, creaking old world out there. You don’t notice it until you start hearing it properly. I am now. I am into my second week as a hearing aid wearer. I’m a long way from deaf, but I was a long way from blind when I started wearing glasses. Now it’s not just the sights that are in focus. The noise is, too.

What noise there is! I didn’t realize how creaky a hardwood floor can be. Or what a racket is made folding a sheet of paper. The other day I was coming out of Planet Bean’s Grange Plaza store and nearly jumped out of my skin. A snow plow sounded like it was bearing down on me. It was halfway across the parking lot. Then there was the Farmers’ Market. It used to be that hundreds of people could shop there in relative peace and quiet. Now they bellow at each other. All at the same time.

On the second day I had the things in my ear, I was in a library board committee meeting. I thought I should apologize for speaking so loudly, that I was trying to adjust to them. The other people said no, I was actually talking more quietly than usual. I thought I was shouting. That’s what it’s like walking around with a microphone and speaker stuffed in each ear.

When hearing starts to go, it is usually the higher frequency sounds that become inaudible first. It seems to happen so gradually that you fail to notice it. When vision starts to go, you do notice. The world starts getting a little bit blurry. Then a lot. You’d have to be blind not to see it.

With hearing loss, you don’t think it’s you at first. It is other people who start mumbling. Many men don’t hear their wives. Some of them can’t.

We learn to compensate and get on with it. Then we have a life altering experience. Like cataract surgery. I have been there as well. With mine, the world became so cloudy it was like looking through a glass coated with Vaseline. With a plastic lens I could see more clearly than I had since I was a child. It was great. Like most people, I wished I could have done it sooner.

Now with a pair of souped-up, computer-driven gizmos in my ears I hear better than I could in years. I could always hear something. Now I hear everything. Life is better with plastic eyes and ears.

With music, you start losing the high notes. It’s so gradual you don’t notice, but when you miss them, you miss a lot. Think about Jimi Hendrix. Even though he’s almost 40 years dead, he’s sounding the way he should all over again. He’s the man who showed the world how a guitar should sound. Listen to him again for the first time. Do it without those little bud-type ear phones. They’re not that good to begin with, and totally incompatible with hearing aids. Get proper ones and Jimi will come back to life for you.

Most of us wear glasses these days. Some just for reading, some just for driving. Some for everything. We don’t think of ourselves as visually impaired. We don’t worry that by putting on a pair of glasses we make a spectacle of ourselves.

A lot of people who should wear hearing aids don’t. There is a stigma to hearing impairment. Shouldn’t be, but there it is. It’s considered a disability, and who wants one of them?

Glasses have become so socially acceptable that they are fashion statements. Not so with hearing aids. They’re not cool. You’ll never hear someone open a conversation by saying, “Wow, I love your hearing aids. They suit your hair and put a creak in your ear.” They’re more likely to pretend they don’t notice. Or look pityingly at you and ask when did you have to start wearing them.

Glasses and hearing aids do the same thing. They bring the world into focus. They help you to sort out what you want to see and hear. One prevents you from walking into brick walls, the other from sound walls. There is no shame in wearing either.