On Not Being Daft in the Head
Writing Challenge 2024
Posted by Chris Sissons on Jul 3, 2024
Writing Challenge ยป Chris Sissons
There is probably nothing more annoying than the person who, offered a microphone, refuses on the grounds they can be heard without it. For goodness sake, I want to shout, if you have something to say worth hearing why do you want possibly 50% of your audience not to hear it?
Maybe they don’t want to appear to be grandstanding. We see pop stars and politicians with microphones and associate them with fame or success or whatever.nPeople have all sorts of odd ideas about public speaking.
But a more likely reason is that they don’t understand what it is like being hard of hearing. The confusion is perhaps understandable if not excusable. I’ve been hard of hearing for many decades, I have a perforated eardrum in my right ear. It’s not the same as being stone deaf, where someone cannot hear anything or profoundly deaf, where a microphone will make little difference.
A few years ago I had a hearing test at Boots and they set up a pair of hearing aids adjusted to my needs. They took me out onto Fargate in the City Centre and … Well I wonder how people with full hearing cope – it was pandemonium! These hearing aids cost over £1000 and so I opted for the National Health Service standard issue, where you’re only permitted to be deaf in one ear.
Lots of people are hard of hearing and perhaps many are not aware of it. You can hear almost anything and it doesn’t seem as if the sound is turned down. A little amplification usually takes care of formal settings. The problem without amplification is background noise. It becomes hard to hear if there are other noises in the background, eg in a restaurant people at other tables. Someone opening or munching a packet of crisps or unravelling a sweet wrapper can drown out what someone is saying in front of you. It’s as if your ears amplify the wrong sounds.
And here’s another annoying thing. Someone tells you something at the same time someone else is wrestling a crisp packet into submission. You ask them to repeat what they just said and they say something else, usually adding an explanation of their original statement. I don’t need their explanation, I’m not daft just a bit deaf!
And that’s the weird thing about deafness, it’s not sexy. If your eyes are not up to scratch you can go to an optician and buy a facial fashion item (see Day 1). You can look good in glasses. Wear a hearing aid and somehow you’re not quite right in the head. There’s nothing fashionable about being a bit deaf.
I’ve no idea why this is so. I abandoned my hearing aid during the lockdown for various reasons. The replacement batteries got lost in the post and most of my communication for over a year was through Zoom with headphones. Now I’m finding I’m struggling a bit so I need to try to get hold of those batteries and start wearing it again. Ho hum.
This is Day 19 of Writing Challenge 2024. People all over the world take part in the WC. We write something every weekday for 4 weeks based on a prompt This year, I'll be sharing 21 articles based loosely on prompts about parts of the body. Do we fully appreciate the role things and stuff play in our lives? Each part of the body has certain things and stuff associated with it. (Probably!) I've no idea where this will go but hope you enjoy the journey. The introductory post was Things and Stuff. The last post was Why Did the Weasel Go Pop? and the next is Solvitur Ambulando.
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