“Did you watch the chairs?” my wife Kim asked.
I gave what I assume was a puzzled look.
“Why would I watch the chairs?” I asked. “Are they going somewhere?”
Kim held up a bowl of fruit.
“I said, ‘Did you wash the cherries?’” she rolled her eyes. “I am so tired of repeating myself. You need to get your hearing checked.”
I nodded. And to keep her happy, I did in fact make an appointment to get my hearing checked.
I had long suspected that my hearing was not as good as it should be. I was in the artillery in the army, and I loved loud rock and roll on my headphones. Although the Army released me and said my hearing was fine, I had my doubts. I didn’t want to be like some older people I know who are in denial about their lack of auditory acuity. While I am not vain about wearing hearing aids, I wasn’t in a hurry to get them either. In the long run, however, like wearing glasses, if hearing aids could improve my sensory experience of life, then I would welcome it.
At the clinic they put me in a booth and gave me a pair of headphones. I was instructed to press a button whenever I heard a tone. The tones came in different pitches and different intervals, so it was hard to know whether I was missing any. After I was finished, they gave me the bad news: I had hearing loss in both ears. That was kind of what I had expected. What I didn’t expect was when the technician said,” I bet your wife is an alto.” I nodded. Kim does have a lower pitched voice than most women.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Your hearing losses are in the range of her voice. I saw on your chart that you have been married a long time so it was easy to connect the dots.
He smiled. “Specific hearing range loss is quite common in men who have been married for a long time.”
The rest of the session was spent on fitting me for hearing aids. When I got home, Kim was happy to find out that she had been validated about my auditory deficiencies. But while I waited for my hearing aids to come, I started doing some research. Hearing starts with small hairs in the ears that vibrate in response to sound waves. Like strings a guitar, different hairs vibrate in response to different frequencies. When these hairs become damaged, often due to overstimulation, a person loses the ability to hear that particular pitch. In summary, my wife broke my ears with her voice.
I do not make this statement with any rancor or ill will. I love her. She is the mother of my children and she has put up with my dumb ass for forty-three years. I’m just stating a fact. Researchers like Deborah Tannen, as well as standup comedians. have pointed out the differences in how and why men and women communicate. My wife and I are, unfortunately for my ears, total stereotypes. She is has three sisters which means there were five females in her house growing up and the only male in the house was her father who was often on the road for business. Whether it by accident or by choice is debatable. What is not debatable is that after retiring and staying home every day, his hearing also deteriorated to the point of needing hearing aids.
We have evolution to blame. Exhibit A is that our hunter gatherer ancestors used division of labor to conquer their environment. The men, unburdened by nursing infants, hunted prey large enough to feed the whole tribe. This task required lots of silent cooperation and a hierarchy of job assignments. Verbal communication before and after the hunt was minimal; the hunting party leader gave marching orders and everybody followed them. During the hunt verbal signals were nonexistent. Women, on the other hand, depended on each other to share information as they gathered whatever food was in season. They had to form strong social bonds to teach each other and take care of each other’s children as necessary. The social bonding and gathering tasks required lots of verbal interaction. As a result, most females have larger sections of their brains devoted to verbal communication than most males.
Because of evolution, I have hearing loss. My hearing aids arrived but after several weeks of experimentation and a refitting, I put them in a drawer. It’s not vanity on my part. They are just uncomfortable inside my ear. Besides that, I don’t notice a whole lot of improvement when I wear them. I found a good merlot to be more helpful. A glass of wine with dinner and I’m good to go for a least an hour of Kim’s talking. The wine takes the edge off of my impatience for her to get to the point of whatever conversation we are having. Savoring the wine allows me to savor the complexities of her multidimensional verbal dissection of whatever she is talking about.
Unfortunately, wine has become a verboten drink at my house. In order to lose the weight I need to lose for health reasons, I have found I must cut alcohol from my diet completely. Once I retire from my current job, which entails random UA’s, then maybe I can substitute THC for alcohol. In the meantime, my ear hairs will just have to keep dying. The things we do for love.
