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Speak up, eh?

I don’t know when I began to wonder about sound. It has always been a welcome companion in the forest, and a timely warning on the city streets. The world is full of auditory puzzles clamoring for disambiguation: horns, burbling creeks, lips… all embarking on their own journeys, their own missions. We need only pay attention to reap their multitudinous rewards. Until we can’t, that is.

Sometimes they muffle, or merge with each other and become the background noise which we have been conditioned to ignore by continual exposure; sometimes, however, we are meant to interpret it. Respond to it.

Often it is not meant as a choice, however. Words, for example, actively seek ears –demand ears- and to ignore them courts disappointment or even anger. Head nodding implies the reception, processing, and acceptance or rejection of their message. You can head-nod only so many times without replying, before the lips uttering the words begin to suspect you are not listening. They seldom reorganize themselves into a smile when they are not heard. Not respected.

Now that Covid masks are largely off again, I’ve realized how effective faces can be in communication. In a noisy restaurant, for example, I have rediscovered a whole panoply of expressions that lay fallow behind the masks. Expressions that begged for release when the words they painted were muffled, suddenly blossomed and expected a response. When I didn’t -when I still couldn’t– they didn’t understand. Neither did I.

“You ever think of getting your ears checked, G?” a friend shouted at me across our little table in an admittedly frantic Starbucks one day.

I remember mounting an offended expression in reply. “And why would I do that Jason?” I answered in what I assumed was a mid-amplitude voice. I could hear my own words quite well in my head.

“Because I find I’m having to shout at you to get a response,” he replied with a sympathetic grin beginning to emerge on his lips.

Jason was a septuagenarian like me so I assumed he was no stranger to the ravages of old age. “It’s the acoustics in here or something,” I said, mounting my best theatrical shrug.

“It’s the acoustics in here,” he said with a little chuckle as he pointed at both of his ears.

“Probably more likely wax, don’t you think?” A senior’s fallback.

His smile grew so wide it threatened the integrity of his ears. “That’s what I thought. I went to my GP to have her rinse them out, but she said both drums were so clean it was like looking through store windows.”

I doubted she’d said that, but I smiled back at him anyway. “Why did you go to the GP in the first place, then?”

“Emily made me go.” He sighed at my obtuseness and decided to elaborate. “She was tired of yelling at me -well when she wasn’t bawling me out anyway…”

I stared at his unwavering smile; this was leading somewhere, I could tell. “So what did…?”

As I spoke, he reached behind one ear, pulled out a lima bean-shaped thing about as big as the end of his thumb with a wire hanging from it, and laid it carefully on the table so I could see it. “Meet the old-man’s-friend,” he said, quickly shooing away my curious fingers. “It’s delicate, G…”

My surprise must have shown on my face and he twinkled his eyes at me. “Never guessed, eh?” He reached for the device, carefully positioned it behind his ear again, then guided the wire into his ear canal. Once it was in place it was almost invisible because he wore what hair remained combed down over this ears. “Bet you didn’t see the other one either, did you?”

I shook my head. This was a revelation for me. “I thought they’d be much bigger, J; my mother’s were like prunes.”

Suddenly he reached for the phone in his pocket, touched something on the screen after glancing at it, and put it back again. “Sorry… just got a text from Emily reminding me to buy some milk on my way home.”

“Wow, I didn’t hear a thing, J… Did you have it on vibrate, or something?” I was becoming a little concerned that I hadn’t heard it.

He shook his head. “Nope, they’re both on Bluetooth,” he explained, looking a little annoyed at its interruption.

I have to admit I frowned at that. “You mean what you’d normally hear on your phone is now only on your hearing aids?”

He nodded. “I can divert some things…”

“How about the sound for Emails?” I admit I was staring at his ears like a kid at his phone.

He shrugged and didn’t seem as happy about the Emails.

“Phone calls, too?” I thought about them as I spoke. “That must be annoying… I block all calls from people not on my contact list, though, so I don’t get many.”

He took a rather deep breath. “There are still a few bugs to work out, G. But I’ve got a followup appointment with the audiologist, or whatever you call her: the wire keeps coming out of one of my ear canals…”

I shook my head slowly. “I dunno, J… I hear they’re pretty expensive for what you get from them.”

The smile returned to his lips. “That’s where you’re wrong, my friend. Have you noticed me smiling a lot at our Wednesday coffee meetings lately?”

“Yeah, even when Stuart is pontificating about the amount of exercise he’s able to do in spite of his age…”

“Or Bob is complaining about the size of the doughnut holes increasing while the diameter of the doughnut stays the same?” Jason’s smile enlarged a couple of centimetres after he said it.

I had to smile at that as well. Bob would go on and on about the hole and the price increasing in tandem as he always put it. “Anyway, what’s that got to do with your hearing aids, J?”

“They’re Bluetooth, remember?”

I nodded, still confused. “What, are you texting with them while he’s talking or something?”

“No, he’d notice if I were, don’t you think?”

I shrugged. “You seem to think they’ve solved your problem, though…”

“Yup,” he said, all grin.

I stared at him quizzically.

“Ever listen to podcasts, G?”

I nodded again. “I listen with my Bluetooth Earphones on the bus…” I suddenly stopped and stared at him. “You don’t mean…?”

“Yup! Nobody would blame an old man if he missed a few words of your conversation would they? I just keep the volume way down…” He winked at me. “Best of both worlds, eh?”

Hmm…

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