I Hear Ya!

One of my friends was confused when at her annual physical she heard the doctor ask if she was “a backhoe user”. What she was actually asked was if she was “a tobacco user”. I laugh every time I think of it. Generally speaking, men seem to lose their hearing earlier than women or at least they lose the higher tones, which includes most women’s voices. Some would claim that’s nothing more than selective hearing, as in “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest”. I kid my husband about having developed this over our many years together, though he’s been given trials of several different hearing aids and so far hasn’t found one that’s comfortable for him. In the meantime, I was out walking in the country, exploring an old railroad track with one of our sons and his kids when they visited last month. Next to the track we discovered the skeleton of a moose that’d apparently been hit by a train ages ago and that was pretty exciting. Then my son commented he couldn’t believe how loud the tree frogs were. What?!?! A chorus of tree frogs and I couldn’t hear it? My family was astounded and when my son advised me to cup my hands over the back of my ears and listen, the cacophony was so obvious I couldn’t believe I had missed something so wonderful. I made myself an appointment next week with the audiology people.

Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay