Upon waking in the morning, I imagine that most happy wives might greet their husbands with the words “Good morning,” or “Did you sleep well,” or “I love you” or something else heartwarming…
Judy is special…
Alarm rings, Judy turns it off and turns to me…
Judy: “I have some sad news about my purse.”
Me, yawning and stretching: “Do you need another new purse?”
J: “Not anymore.”
So I’m sitting in my home office eating a bowl of oatmeal with raisins when the cat prances in and, without so much as a “hello”, throws up on my carpet and walks out again.
That’s it. Just enter, barf, exit.
At least she is efficient.
I started going grey pretty early in life – in my early 20’s if I remember right. The process sped up quite a bit in my very early 30’s – about the time that my oldest child, my beloved daughter, hit 12 1/2 years of age. Not sure why that happened…
Couple that with the fact that I also have 10 younger siblings – 6 sisters (responsible for my learning to dance… Waiting for the bathroom…) and 4 brothers (at least partly responsible for me having hair because my dad gave me his and he loved me so much that he threw in Tim’s, John’s and Bob’s hair along with it).
Well, when I started going grey, I also started getting a lot of “old man” comments from my brothers. I never stopped getting them until this happened:
When It did happen, I decided to take the high road and not seek revenge on the perpetrators. Rather, I attempted to be encouraging, supportive and helpful.
Don’t worry, Tim, you’re not losing hair, you’re gaining face…
Bob, it’s not that bad – you hair isn’t receding, it’s just moving down to your back…
Hey John, just think how easy it will be to find you with a flash light if you ever get lost in a deep cave… Even if the search party doesn’t see you directly, they can still find you by the reflection of the light off your head onto the ceiling…
I’m such a good brother.
Truth be told, there was a brief period when I seemed to be finding my hair in combs, brushes, drains, and pillowcases, etc.. I don’t know if it was a seasonal or environmental thing, but I wanted to be encouraging to my brothers, not join them in their folliclessness…
I found some stuff that’s advertised to arrest your hair from falling out. Not sure if it works, but I noticed that whatever hair loss I was experiencing stopped dead when I started using it.
And now, decades later…
Oh… Hey guys! I forgot to tell you about this stuff:
Is it too late?
* (You may be wondering “what about your other brother? Is he OK?
Well, actually, yes. He was too young to make verbal attacks on my hair color at the time, so he seems to have been spared the hair loss thing. Good for you, Jimmy!)
For years, the first word out of my mouth when addressed by my wife was, “Huh?”. This was usually followed by a repeat, on her part, of whatever it was that I didn’t hear the first time, and completed by the words, “will you PLEASE check into getting hearing aids??!!
This went on, as I said, for many years. More than a decade, actually.
Then one day a little over two years ago, I decided that, maybe, I should have my hearing checked and I contacted the VA medical system to set up an appointment.
It was all pretty painless and after two visits – one to get tested and measured and one to pick them up – I walked out with a brand new pair of electronic ears. I commenced to wearing them over the next several days to get used to how they work.
These particular devices are built so that they fit into your ear in a fashion that makes them almost invisible to the naked eye. AND you can control them with a device that hangs around your neck and connects to the aids via Bluetooth technology.
AND that’s not all! you can also connect to your cell phone the same way!
But, after a few days of wearing out the novelty, I stopped wearing them on a regular basis. Oh, I didn’t just let them rot for six months at a time, I would throw them on every so often when I could see Judy becoming frustrated with the word “Huh?”, but I kinda let them rest for weeks or a few months between required usages.
As time went on and the TV volume grew in inverse proportion to my hearing ability degradation, Judy began to start moving further from the living room when I was observing whatever show I was enthralled with at the time.
I believe the camel’s back finally ruptured when I discovered The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. The show seems to fit in well with my level of sophistication but it is not a good match for Judy’s tastes.
And there is the fact that, by now, the volume is up to about 79.
Well, being the perceptive and loving husband that I am, I decided, yesterday, to give the old hearing aids another shot…
I am happy to report that the situation has improved a lot since the day before yesterday!
And today I figured out how to connect to both my computer and the TV! I watched a whole episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Judy couldn’t hear a thing!
Grawesome!!
With these little buds in my ear canals, I have the hearing of Superman! I can hear EVERYTHING!
And I mean everything. I can hear so much that, depending on what’s going on around us, I am now having a bit of a challenge hearing Judy when she talks to me…
So, what can I hear? I’ll tell you…
In addition to Judy’s voice and friends talking to me, here are some of the things I can hear with my hearing aids:
The only time I can’t hear any of this stuff is when I’m actively connected to the phone, computer or TV. (And when I say “any of this stuff,” I also mean the human voice…)
Unfortunately, all of this racket is going to drive me nuts so I may have to use the aids somewhat sparingly. Or figure out how to filter some of this stuff out.
But at least I can turn the TV volume down to zero…
And after taking the garbage out today, I’m really glad that there’s no such thing as smelling aids…
Things With Six Strings 