Going Deaf

One thing that starts happening as we age is going deaf. It'll be worse for aging Baby Boomers than earlier generations because we've listened to so much loud music and other noise.

Television is an early problem because the actors mumble. Most televisions will allow you to display closed captioning but I'm convinced that the person who types in the words for closed captioning can't hear much better than I can.

Next we start having trouble hearing women because their voices are higher in pitch. Actually we hear everyone--men and women--just not clearly enough to know what that person said. More and more the people around me produce sound without meaning. Yesterday I went for a jaunt with a soft-voiced friend. She had to repeat at least one sentence out of every five. I heard her voice--just could not break all the sentences down into meaningful words.

I begged the doctor to clean out the wax plugs from my ears, but he insisted my ears were clean all the way down. I can't imagine how that could be.

I guess my next medical deduction will be an expensive little plastic do-hickey to wear in my ear. Or maybe I'll just learn to enjoy the silence.

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