I will admit something kind of embarrassing and frustrating.  I am losing, or have lost, a portion of my hearing.  I am not getting any younger (yet!), I spent several years in very loud rock and roll bands, and now, it seems, I am paying the price and/or learning the difficult lesson the rest of the aging trailing edge boomers already know.  When my children talk to me on at crowded fairs in a high voice with a lot of background noise, I can’t really understand them.  I have to ask them to say it again.  And sometimes again.  And maybe one more time.  When I’m in a car and there’s a lot of traffic noise, and my friends in the back of the SUV are chatting, I have to take it on faith that they’re not mocking me.  I know people are talking, but I can’t hone in on what they’re saying. 

Obviously there’s not much I can do about this.  I know a few people with hearing aids or who have difficulty hearing. They were born with hearing loss.   I don’t think my problem is serous enough for an electronic device–it’s mostly situation specific.  It can get very frustrating, because you can feel stupid saying “Pardon” and “What?” and “What was that again?”  And what’s more frustrating if the person does repeat it, and you do understand, it’s usually not “disconnect the blue wire or the house will explode” or “I must have you–now!” but some lame everyday thing that makes you wonder why you bothered to ask them to repeat it. 

Anyway, welcome to middle age.  It’s awesome.  I said–it’s AWESOME!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 10:22 am and is filed under Cranky Old People Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.