My grandmother is getting hearing aids. She saw the audiologist last week, and he confirmed what we've suspected for the past two decades: her hearing sucks. I was the biggest culprit for the longest time. I was the one whose speech she could almost never deter. No big shocker there...so many with hearing difficulties tell me that my voice is at a pitch that is difficult to hear. Unfortunately, one can't help the voice they were given...
She would ask my younger self a question, and I would reply shyly, my face pointed toward the ground, and draw with the toes of my shoes practiced lines across the floor. I was an exceptionally shy child—painfully so, really. It was admitted to me in my maturity that my grandparents often feared speaking to me because it might just enact me to burst into tears at being noticed. At my response to the question , my grandmother would look dumbfoundedly toward my parents for translation.
But even after I stopped mumbling and started directing my voice toward people instead of building elements, my voice wasn't something she heard overly well. I would spend a pleasant afternoon with her, yelling every moment of course, and return home with a raw throat. I became irrationally irritated in her company, and began to loathe the incessant repetition of every phrase that passed my lips. But then, the situation bettered considerably, and she began having the very same difficulties with the rest of the family too. Misery does so love company. Of course, in my grandmother's eyes, she did not have a hearing problem. No, not at all...rather, it's that we all talk too softly. The issue was with us, you see, and not her at all. That's what the doctors were told whenever they inquired, leastwise...
We became nasty little next-generationers and began to mold the situation to our satirical benefit. In our defense, it IS irritating to constantly repeat yourself, and you get to the point that you'd rather communicate via Morse Code...you know, using your head and a brick...or a corkscrew. So, there would be a running commentary on all communication plays. There would be the thunderous delivery of niceties, and the two-second follow-up of "indoor voice" scathing. Unfortunately, it has become standard. We've grown accustomed to having private conversations right under the nose of our gossipy matron. This newest development shakes me to my core.
She will now be able to hear us, but will we remember? Will the last ten years of communication protocol be reversible? It will not be easy, this much I know to be true. I am still grappling with the idea of talking to my grandmother and repeating nothing...what does one do to fill up a conversation if not repeat their last sentence three times? You don't actually handle more than one topic a conversation, do you? I mean, how can you talk about the sale on Twinkies and the cover story of the Wisconsin State Journal all in the same day!? Why, it's absurd! I am duly afraid.
