When a Couple Goes (Selectively) Hard of Hearing
Welcome to my life
I just had my hearing checked at the request of my beloved. Why?
“You never answer when I ask you to do something,” my husband said. “There must be something wrong with your hearing. Have you thought about having it checked?”
Really?? Should I mention that he mumbles? His sentences tend to run into one another and create a syllabic traffic jam. It happens so often, in fact, that I genuinely don’t know what in sam-hell he is saying.
After telling me one time too many times, I took the bull by the horns. The very next day, I made an appointment for an audiological evaluation.
When I stepped into the sound booth at the audiologist’s office, a white-coated technician explained the procedure.
“You mean she was all coated in white?” I could almost hear my husband say as if misconstruing that the technician had fallen into a vat of melted marshmellows.
“NO! SHE WAS WEARING A WHITE DOCTOR’S COAT,” I’d say loudly. I wondered why I had to explain something this simple.
Back to me in the sound booth:
“You’ll hear several words, like sand, ice cream, train, etc., and then you’ll hear pitches at various decibel levels.”
I sweated it out in the beginning. I had to get an A+ to prove that my hearing was unimpaired and that possibly it was one of those “It’s you, darling. Not me.”
When I finished the test, the audio technician returned to the booth. She opened the door and peered in.
“You hear like a 10-year old!” she said.
“Thank you!!!” (I couldn’t wait to tell my husband.)
My suggestion to you: the next time your partner tells you that you need to have your hearing checked, bring them along to your appointment. Tell the audiologist to take a lunch break, and you call the words. Have your partner be the one with the headsets on in the sound booth.
Explain that they should raise their hand when they hear you.
Ready? Begin!
“Did you remember to take out the garbage today?” I whisper into the mic directly connecting me to my husband’s ears.
Hmm. I’m not seeing his hand go up.
A little louder.
“DID YOU REMEMBER TO TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE TODAY?”
Hand goes up. (Good sign.)
“How about picking up your socks from the floor?” I say at medium decibel.
No response.
Ask again, even louder:
“HOW ABOUT PICKING UP YOUR FRIKKIN’ SOCKS FROM THE FLOOR?”
There was still no sign of response. He must be losing his hearing.
At the end of the session, tell your partner (in normal voce), “This concludes our test. Please remove your earphones and wait until an attendant (which is me) comes into the sound booth.”
Through the one-way glass, you watch him obediently pull off the earphones.
You then walk into the booth.
His eyes look up at you beckoningly.
“How’d I do?” he asks with testosterone-induced swagger.
At that, reveal the results.
“You, my darling, hear like a 3-year old. You don’t listen.”
Then, pack up and go home to another nice quiet dinner. Just the two of you, where the love is so great that you don’t even have to hear what the other person is saying. Just nod. And feel empowered knowing that your hearing is perfectly fine, thank you very much.
Bonni Brodnick is the author of the soon-to-be-released memoir, “My Stroke in the Fast Lane: A Journey to Recovery” and “Pound Ridge Past,” now in its second edition. She is a contributor to HuffPost and formerly with Condé Nast Publications. Bonni has written scripts for Children’s Television Workshop, was a weekly newspaper columnist, and editor of two academic magazines. She is a member of Pound Ridge Authors Society and has a blog (bonnibrodnick.com). Bonni is also an Ambassador for the American Heart Association and a proud Stroke Survivor.
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