what?

Sorry, can you say that again?

I have been reading up on how air pod pros can be used as hearing aids for my mother. As part of this I had her complete a hearing assessment today using the mimi hearing test app. I could hear the sounds beeping in the air pods in her ear from my seat across the room, but watched as she sat with her finger hovering about the “I can hear it” button, waiting patiently for a sound. It turns out that even with her hearing aids in, she has only 45% of her hearing in her right ear and close to zero in her left ear.

In other hearing-related news I finally watched the Sound of Metal the other day. I thought it was good. And I found the unforced examination of the concept of deaf culture really thought provoking. The other thing that movie did well was switching back and forth between different audio-perspectives: what could be heard of the world outside the main character’s head, and what the main character could hear – first before his hearing suddenly disappeared, then as it was disappearing, when it was gone altogether, and then the confusing noise that he was able to recapture after surgery.

This did make me think more about what it must be like for my mother to continue to try to interact with the world around her – which, frankly, has mostly been exclusively this little family of ours in this house over the last 6 months.

I ended up taking the same hearing assessment that I had had my mother take this morning. My hearing was at around 75% for each ear – worse than about 93% of people my same age. Ima be honest: that freaked me out a bit. I’ll have to get my own ears checked out one of these days. It occurs to me that this is the kind of thing that can sneak up on you – in fact that sort of seems that that’s what’s happened in this case. So I guess it’s good to know.

I’ll adjust. It’ll be fine.