Say What? I have just discovered that I am going deaf. No need to panic. Evidently it’s only selected frequencies I can’t hear any more. When I went to my otologist (Yes, that’s what ear docs apparently like being called) at Costco….I tend to do most of my medical examinations at Costco….he informed me about those frequencies.
Together, otologist Joe and I went through them one by one. Of course my wife was present….she would never let me go to Costco by myself, are you kidding. The one time I did go by myself, some 15 years ago, she made me return every item. Of course I had just unloaded the van, so I had to reload, and re-unload in the Costco parking lot. Not as easy as it sounds when you’re grappling with a 17 foot canoe, a 46-inch TV and a 12 piece stainless steel patio set with sunken pool.
You should know that I call my wife “Love,” not because I can’t remember her name but because once, in a moment of total exhaustion, I called her by my first wife’s name, “Lulabell.” (This was before I began calling my first wife “evil.”) Unfortunately the mishap occurred inside a Costco store across several aisles and my voice carries pretty well. Love sounds a lot better.
At any rate, Love was with me at the Otologist’s as he went over the results of the hearing exam. And lo and behold, as he began to listen to my wife’s questions about those missing frequencies, he determined they were exactly the same frequencies my wife used for speaking. Unbelievable coincidence! And what’s more he revealed that he had the same affliction….but the unheard frequencies were those of his own wife, Jezebel.
He also opened his file cabinets to reveal a drawer full of husbands suffering the same malady! This introduced me to a whole new world, so I began listening more closely to the couples and families around us and discovered that men can lose the frequencies of almost any women in their family: mothers, sisters, wives and even daughters. Who’d a thunk?
Love is not quite so convinced. As a matter of fact, since this episode began, I hardly see her anymore at all. She seems to spend a lot more time “out.”
When I ask where she’s been, she says I couldn’t hear her anyway, so why tell me what she was doing? Well actually, she didn’t say that last part…..no, she had it written down on a large whiteboard she has affixed to the refrigerator. The one that tells me what she wants me to hear each day.
Well, I gotta stop. Love’s iPhone just told me it’s time to go to Costco.