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“This way, Karen,” Mother calls to me from across the Safeway parking lot.
I walk straight ahead.
“Over here.”
The line of my mouth matches the straight line I walk. I am angry at her for not listening to what I know she can hear. So many times I have tried to explain: In voice, I find no clue whether the speaker is left, right, in front of me, behind me, or suspended seven feet in the air.
If their voice provides no clue… why won’t they turn it off?
If they want me, they can come and get me.
* * * *
Yet it takes me, also, years to make the needed adjustments to my own behavior.
Listening to the poller, I hold the phone a comfortable two inches from my right ear. On a lark, I switch it my left ear. Yep, now I am pressing the phone right into my ear, straining to catch the thread of conversation.
By now it has been imprinted in my brain:
When I can’t hear what someone is saying, I don’t have to ask them to repeat themselves (again), don’t have to say “Uh huh… uh huh…” like I am following along.
No, I can switch ears. When I switch from my left ear to my right, the volume may go up not one but four of five notches.
And now the volume inside my head is set too loud.
* * * *
So often people do not believe what they don’t yet have an explanation for. If I could go back in time I would explain what a kid can’t explain: that the ability to localize sound is dependent on analyzing volume differences between the left and right ears… a process that can be thrown awry by bilateral hearing impairment…
My left ear tries it’s durndest, bless its heart, but sometimes I suspect it was included primarily for decorative purposes.
Or as a backup, perhaps.
Pardon Me, You’re Addressing an Ornamental Ear http://goo.gl/fb/uknub #karen #memoirs
It must have been challenging when you were younger, how has your brain adapted over the years to that ornamental ear?
Well, it seems that my brain has made some adjustments. I think the discrepancy must be quite a bit greater than it was when I was a teenager, and yet I’m a small bit better at tasks that require the cooperation of 2 ears.
Mainly the thing is that when I get lost or fail to respond in expected was, I now explain that there are some processing issues — hearing and otherwise — that are not the same thing as be being lost in my own head.
There is someone on this site who has a son with a significant degree of hearing impairment in both ears. She wrote about how he was suspected of having various other learning issues until the hearing issue was discovered. A lot of things are solvable in one way or another once a person discovers what they are… and what they aren’t. Me, I can find my way out of a phone booth — but that’s about all I can find my way out of. In and of itself, that isn’t such a big deal. (Allow extra time to get places.
)
Pardon Me, You’re Addressing an Ornamental Ear http://goo.gl/fb/uknub #karen #memoirs
That must be one beautiful ear! Fascinating to read how you adapted over the years.
Karen I was just having a conversation with my husband the other day about noticing him looking away when people were talking to him or even sometimes looking down. Ta da…found out he is having trouble hearing and turns his head so his ‘good ear’ can hear. When he is looking down he said he is concentrating on trying to hear what the person is saying. I’ll have to show him your story here.