Hear, here

Okay, all you old rockers and rollers, you metal heads, you users of headphones, you turners-uppers of volume to setting 11, you boomers. It’s time to listen up, if you can. Can you hear me? Probably just so-so, right? Say what?

I was a teen in the ’60s. In the ’60s, we liked our music loud. We liked our music loud enough so as to P.O. the parental units. We were more annoying than the rebels of the ’50s. We cut our teeth on watts per channel. We were tired of the tinny sound that came out of our RCA turntable speakers. As the ’60s turned into the ’70s, we embraced everything big. We had big hair. We had big ambitions. We had no idea where we were going, but we were heading there with lots of big music. When we worked, we worked in places that hummed and buzzed and clanged and boomed. We got righteous about our workplace rights, our civil rights and our human rights. When we played, we played loud. We went to loud concerts, so loud it would take days for our hearing to return to normal. Or did it?

Well, here we are. Boomers, who can’t hear the difference between an “s” and an “f.” Someone mentions the dark sky and a Boomer responds with, “I love pie! What kind of pie?” Boomers with concert-ears smile and nod in a conversation involving more than three people because we just can’t decipher what the heck anyone is saying. As a result, we’ve all agreed to do things we’d never want to do, and growl when someone reminds us. We don’t remember saying, “Yes, I’d be happy to watch your Schnauzer for six weeks.” Yup.

We’re more than baby boomers—we are the hearing-challenged generation. We’ve boomed our way into a closed-in, paranoid, lonely world of “what the heck’s going on?” We sorta know we’ve got a hearing problem, but hearing loss is for old-farts, and hell’s bells! We aren’t old.

We’ll manage. We’ll annoy the H E double ear trumpets out of everyone we speak with because they have to repeat themselves, dozens of times, in a conversation. But, we’ll manage. We’ll talk more loudly because we can’t hear what we’re saying. We no longer whisper sweet nothings—the target of our affection is as hearing- challenged as we are. We’ll tell the younger folks to stop mumbling and we’ll moan about young people these days.

Joking aside, hearing loss isn’t necessarily an ailment of old age. It can happen to anyone, at any time in their life. Hearing loss has been directly linked to a host of problems. No, I didn’t say a toast of awesome. And if it isn’t bad enough not to hear, studies have linked untreated hearing loss to irritability, negativism, anger, fatigue, tension, stress and depression. Yup, the less we hear, the grumpier we get— and it wears us out. Dadgum it anyhow. When our hearing goes, we feel socially rejected and lonely. Many of us avoid social situations. Our alertness is diminished. Believe it or not, our memory suffers with hearing loss. Hearing loss is bad enough but memory loss? Oiy! “Where did I leave my glasses? Why does he want pie? I don’t remember saying I’d bake a pie! Take in his trousers?”

So, how would you know if you’re suffering from a hearing loss (no, not stuffing from earwig sauce)? If you frequently find yourself asking people to repeat themselves, you might have earwig sauce. If you can’t locate the source of a sound or a voice, you might have twigging moss. If you have difficulty understanding what is being said in noisy places like restaurants, even though others are managing to have conversation, you might have wigging floss. If you don’t respond to voices over the phone or switch ears continually while using the phone—let’s face it—you might have beering off.

All right, get those lug holes checked, kiddies. Tell your health care provider you think you’ve got a problem. Suck it up. No, I didn’t say delivery truck. Don’t make me shout at you!

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca