Hearing again

Yesterday I got a hearing aid. The other one broke when the audiologist was programming it. I’ll pick it up today or tomorrow.

Even with only one there is a marked difference. I hear the clicking of my typing, the swish of my pants as I pull them up, loud crunching when I eat my toast. My footfalls sound the same because the aids don’t enhance the low sounds, where my hearing is normal. But I hear every squeak of the floor. The turn signals on the car tick loudly. The little song at the end of the wash cycle chirps merrily, quite audible from a floor up.

I didn’t say “What?” to Vic once in our, as usual, minimal conversation last night. Most remarkably, however, I sat in the sauna last evening at the Y and followed a whole conversation between two girls without looking at them once. It was the usual low, mumbled, fast teenage talk, which I am sure they have adopted unconsciously to keep their elders out of the loop. But I understood nearly everything. It was all I could do to keep myself from interjecting, “But I think you have to go to medical school to become an anesthesiologist.”

My powers of speech comprehension--which is a matter of attention as well as hearing--have been sharpened by the years of hearing loss. In fact, the audiologist told me when she gave me the test that my 80-85% speech comprehension was remarkable, given the degree of my loss. So I have regained the sharp ears (ear, today) that helped make language learning easy for me in the past. No wonder I had trouble understanding African French last week, which used to be easy for me. I’m sure I could pick it up much quicker with the aids.  That is the great gift of good hearing, which I was losing, the ability to understand other people’s languages, whether it is Teenage English or heavily accented French. And with it, the ability to eavesdrop.

I love to eavesdrop. It is part of my nature. I am a born observer, a quiet hider in corners, watching the world pass, trying to understand it. I am an Enneagram 5. I have grown out of that shell, of course, and become an active participant in the world. I can be outgoing for long periods of time. I am happy to be in charge, a better hostess than guest. But I still find comfort and pleasure in being the silent observer. It’s my default mode—either downright solitude or solitude in the midst of society. It’s why, in years of going to the Y, I have never struck up a friendship there. I’d rather indulge my penchant for watching people. And now, listening to them as well.

I broke that pattern of solitude-in-company the other day at the Y. Rather, someone else broke it for me. I was wearing one of my bike trip T-shirts and a lithe, gray-haired woman spoke to me as I was walking down the hall.

“Do you bike?”

We talked for 15 minutes and exchanged email and land addresses. We will bike together next season. Well into the conversation, I noticed that she was wearing hearing aids, the all but invisible kind I was about to get myself. I could see them only because her hair was clipped very short.

I think I’ll let my hair brush the front of my ears just enough to hide the tiny, transparent tubes. Although I am telling anyone who cares to read this blog that I wear hearing aids, I’d rather be stealthy about it in public. I want them to be invisible. I, too, want to make myself invisible from time to time so I can eavesdrop.