I Could Hear Fine If You'd All Stop Mumbling

By John McDonnell

My Dad was one of those people who loved to sing. He’d sing in the shower, in the car, around the house. He liked to sing popular songs, and he had a good voice, but he never got the lyrics right.

That was because he couldn’t hear them. He was losing his hearing.

This bothered me when I was a teenager, the way he’d mangle the lyrics to my favorite songs. Teenagers don’t have a lot of patience with their parents anyway, and to have a parent who’s hard of hearing is especially trying for their overly sensitive souls.

Which is why I should have more sympathy for my own teenage children, because now the situation is reversed. I’m the one who can’t hear.

I don’t mangle song lyrics because I don’t sing in the shower. In every other way, however, I’m like my Dad. I’m constantly telling my children to “Speak up!”, I’ve decided that most actors these days are intentionally mumbling their way through their movie dialogue, and it’s amazing how bad the acoustics are in my church because I can’t hear more than a fraction of what the priest is saying every Sunday.

In my rational moments I can admit that it’s not the fault of poor acoustics or mumbling actors, but I’m the one to blame for the world getting quieter. After all, hearing loss runs in my family. My father had it, and so did his mother, who was almost totally deaf and had been that way since she was in her 40s.

I should not be surprised that I am losing my hearing.

I’m not surprised, but I am furious.

I joked about it when my hearing started going ten years ago. “It’s selective deafness,” I’d say. “I just can’t hear my wife nagging me about doing chores.” Or, “I can’t hear it when the baby cries at night, unfortunately (wink, wink), so my wife has to get up with her.”

The situation has gotten worse, though. My kids will crank up the decibels when they want me to hear them, or stand in front of me and act out what they want to say, like I’m stone deaf and can only read lips or facial expressions.

Hearing loss is no fun. I notice the same exasperated tone from my kids that I used with my father when he couldn’t hear what I said. They tell me every day that I need a hearing aid. My wife pleads and cajoles with me.

I keep refusing.

It’s a matter of vanity, I guess. I don’t want that little brown button in my ear, but more than that, I don’t want to acknowledge that I’m getting older and I have flaws.

I read once that Bob Hope refused to wear a hearing aid, and it ruined his career after he got older. His pinpoint comic timing deteriorated when he couldn’t hear other people’s lines or the audience response. I also read, however, that Thomas Edison was stone deaf by middle age and said it was a great blessing because he could concentrate on his work, and shut out all the noise of people yakking at him.

I try to tell my kids the Edison story, but they more likely think of me as Bob Hope -- flubbing my lines every day because I can’t pick up what my costars are saying.

I know I should break down and get the hearing aid. There are advances in technology every day and the newer models are so tiny you can barely see them. And Bill Clinton famously got two hearing aids at the tender age of 51, which helped to make it more acceptable among Baby Boomers.

It’s so 21st century to have something sticking in your ear, right? I’ll just look like one of those people who is so important they walk around all day talking on the phone attached to their ear.

I know all those things, but in my heart I still can’t get used to the fact that I’m now my Dad, getting all the lyrics wrong, saying “Pardon?” even when the speaker is right in front of me, and having my kids scream at me in frustration when I don’t understand something they said to me.

Then again, I guess I should remember that my Dad refused to get a hearing aid for many years also, and that if I really want to be just like him I could go on for another ten years like this, until my loved ones are ready to clobber me because I can’t hear a thing they say.

Maybe I’d better Google “hearing aids”. I think I’m ready.

THE END