The Birds! The Birds!
or...
"What's That Noise?"
Copyright 2005 by Rebecca
Roberts
All Rights Reserved (Click Here for Details)
What? Pardon? Excuse me? Sorry? ...there's no
comfortable word to use when you ask someone to repeat themselves,
especially if you need to use these queries frequently.
I had a childhood fraught with ear problems. Excruciating long
term earaches, which our housekeepers treated according to their
various home remedy theories by pouring warm oil into my ears, covering
them with hot wash cloths or applying some unknown brownish liquid with
an eye dropper. I went completely deaf in third grade and it
embarrassed me profoundly. So, I tried to hide the fact that I
could no longer hear from everyone
around me.
I developed clever and deceptive cover-up
mechanisms. At home I talked incessantly from the moment I
tumbled out of bed until I left the house for school. If Iwas
talking no one would discover I couldn't hear them. My secret was
soon unraveled at school. Mrs. Soika, my beloved third grade
teacher, called my dad at home and reported that I often didn't respond
when she called on me. She thought I might have a hearing
problem. I felt deceived. She did this behind my back
without even telling me beforehand! I was taken out of
school. There were visits to the doctor’s office, where I
remember my ears being probed and peered into, and then a few weeks
later as I lay on the living room rug outlining the pictures in my
favorite coloring book, I suddenly heard the radio.
As a teenager, I was told the reason for my slight hearing loss was
scar tissue on my eardrums, probably caused by a childhood
infection. In recent years I've begun to notice that some of my
friends need to speak up and I use the volume control on the telephone
in order to hear some conversations. I always try to get a seat
in front at the theater. In my Pilates class I can hear people
talking, but can't quite make out the words and others often laughed
when
I din't know what the joke was.
Two things inspired me to have my hearing checked after years of
thinking about it. I attend a session at a conference. The
facilitator asks us to close our eyes while she guides us through an
exercise. I am sitting only a few chairs away from her in a large
circle of women. As the exercise begins, her voice softens as she
guides us into a quiet relaxation. Several murmuring minutes
later, she brings us back into the moment, raises her voice and asks us
to write about one of the things that came up for us during the guided
relaxation. Nothing at all came up for me, as I heard not one
word of what she said. I have nothing to write about.
Later in the day I meet a woman who casually tucks her hair behind one
ear as we are talking. I notice she's wearing a hearing aid and
ask her about it. She is effervescently enthusiastic about how
hearing aids changed her life. I call Brad, an audiologist and
friend and make an appointment
The day of my hearing exam I am excited and nervous. I’m hoping
that my loss can be helped, dreading the possibility that maybe it
can’t and knowing it's time to find out. I'm missing too
much. Brad, asks me to explain the specifics of my hearing
difficulties, then I sit in front of a speaker and listen to a man's
recorded voice distinctly pronouncing a list of words. He
enunciates clearly. I am to repeat the words back to Brad.
In the first segment, the voice speaks the words with no background
noise. Next the same voice articulates a new list of words
at the same decibel level, this time with background noise similar to
what a person might experience in a restaurant.
On part one, the quiet list; I am surprised to find I got only 85%
correct. ...what? I thought I heard them all
perfectly!
On the second list, the one with background noise I heard only 52%
correctly. I'm shocked. My hearing loss has advanced slowly
and I have developed coping skills, but I'm at the point where my
hearing deficit is impacting my life more than I realized.
Childhood events evidently have nothing to do with my current hearing
loss. I have a classic case of noise damage. I have spent
way too many hours lying on my back listening to music with the volume
up – way up! While I lay in ecstasy, riding fabulous emotional
waves of music, my poor overburdened ear bones and nerves were busily
doing a death dance.
Finally I sit in a sound booth wearing a pair of headphones. Again I
respond to spoken words. This time Brad feeds the sound into the
headphones corrected for my hearing loss and this time I hear 100%
correctly. I am fascinated to notice, that when I hear the words
with clarity, I feel free to enunciate them back precisely. I no
longer feel it necessary to slur the end of a word in order to cover up
my possible misinterpretation. Another little deceptive coping
mechanism I hadn’t even been aware I was using.
Three weeks later I return to the office to meet my new hearing
aids. Brad instructs me on the care and feeding of my new ear
jewelry and warns me I might feel tired the first few days.
That's odd I think, what is it about putting a couple of strange little
plastic objects in my ears that can possibly make me tired? I
soon discover the answer.
After not hearing clearly for so long, I've suddenly turned into a
character out of a Hitchcock movie running around exclaiming, "The
Birds! The Birds"!! Yes, I've always heard the birds, but now
they seem to be screaming. For days I am overstimulated and
amazed as new sound discoveries bombard me.
In the library I feel like I am eavesdropping. I can distinctly
hear the conversations going on around me. Approaching my car I
clearly hear the locks click as my remote unlocks the doors. I am
blatantly conscious of my turn signal. Each click has an amazing
precise beginning and end. Ticka! Ticka! Ticka! Such
clarity! The ability to distinguish the beginnings and ending of
all sounds is magical. Brushing my hair is rather
horrifying. Each stroke sounds like sandpaper rubbing my scalp
and when I wipe my hands on the towel I hear the friction between cloth
and hands. I can even hear the sound of Kleenex between my
fingers. Keys clank, pens click, leaves clatter, traffic is
caustic and when I turn on my chair I hear my jeans rubbing on the reed
seat. I used to laugh at my cat when he opened his mouth and made
soft, almost pretend mews, but, now I discover he sounds rather
demanding.
The best comparison I can make to my new hearing discoveries is the aha
I have when, after hearing a foreign or complicated name repeatedly on
the news I finally see it in print. There's a sudden
connection. Oh, that's how it's spelled, that's how you say
it. What most of us take for granted is truly miraculous to one
who hasn't heard clearly.
I now sport two leading edge mini computers in my ears. Each one
has within its ear canal shaped shell a variable volume control and two
programs. On the outside surface is a tiny volume control wheel
and a miniscule button that I can press to switch back and forth
between programs depending on the requirements of my current
environment.
I am passionately in love with these little gems and the hearing acuity
they provide, but living through the acclimation process is
interesting. I've been living in a very quiet world. After
some time, I'm told, my brain will relearn what things I don't need to
pay attention to and some of the things I'm overly aware of now will
fade to a more normal level. I'm hearing many things for the
first time in years so they are presently too noticeable. Eating
will cease to consist of a bevy of smacking, crunchy mastications and
juicy wet gulping sounds. I will no longer be constantly looking
over my shoulder startled by unknown sounds. People won’t be
curious why I’m laughing aloud in the bathroom as I unzip and pull down
my pants and hear the distinct clicking sound of the metal zipper and
the loud swish of fiber on skin.
I could have lived without hearing help for a long time. Over the
years I've become an expert on gestalting things together, even though
at times it has made me a bit slow on the uptake. One of my many
denial issues was rationalizing that I was helping my brain stay acute
making it work hard in this way. I felt I was managing very well,
but thankfully I didn't wait. The batteries, the control buttons
are all small and younger fingers learn more easily. More
importantly after too long a wait, the brain actually loses its ability
to reconnect synapses and recognize certain sounds. Hearing aids
can't reconstruct that loss.
There's no such thing as a perfect world and I've always been overly
noise sensitive. I love quiet and I've lived in a very quiet
world for a long time. I often find noise irritating and the
noise that irritated me before is even more irritating now, but I'm
relearning and in the meantime I have a volume control.
Your thoughts and feedback are
appreciated.
Please
EMail with your responses and thoughts related to this short story