Quick note: This is an edited combination of two older posts that I’ve since deleted. My hearing is still devolving, so I wanted to keep things updated a bit.
I was born at the tail end of Generation X, in a group sometimes referred to as Xennials. As Wikipedia tells it, “Xennials are described as having had an analog childhood and digital young adulthood.” That’s a good summary.
When I was a young child we had an old reel-to-reel tape player, a record player, and an 8-track player. As I got older, I started my cassette tape collection, which would eventually grow to massive proportions. By the time I was in high school, CDs were the new thing, so I got rid of my tapes and started my CD collection. In college, digitized music that you could carry on an mp3 player became more common, and would eventually evolve into the streaming services that we currently have.
And those are just the changes in music. Don’t get me started on computers, phones, and other technology.
The reason I’m focusing on music is because that has been the one constant in my life. I love to listen to music. All types of music (almost), and this started early on in my life. That’s why I remember the different forms that music has taken over my four and a half decades.
I grew up in a very rural area on the outskirts of a small town. The population of the city I grew up in was (at the time) smaller than the high school where I currently work. The town has grown significantly in the past few decades.
I had friends, but they lived miles away. Without any easy means of getting to them or simple forms of communication like we currently have, I had to find ways to occupy my time after school and on weekends. If I wasn’t playing with Legos or reading books, you would probably find me listening to music. Just lying on my floor listening and singing along, even if I didn’t know the words.
I don’t have any regrets. Life’s too short. But I do sometimes wish that I’d taken the time and had the patience to learn to play an instrument. I have two guitars that are currently acting as expensive decorations. I could probably still learn to play them, but it wouldn’t be the same.
At the ripe old age of 38, I got my first set of hearing aids, and my hearing has continued to get progressively worse over the past few years. When I try to play guitar, I can’t actually tell if I’m hitting the notes correctly.
Nine years ago, I went to an ENT for what I thought was just bad allergies. My head felt stuffy and my ears were plugged up. The ENT checked my ears, nose, and throat (surprise, surprise), and declared me healthy. But what about my plugged up ears? Apparently, they were not plugged up. The next stop was a couple of rooms over to the audiologist for a hearing test.
Once we’d finished, the audiologist said the words I had been dreading, “You are a prime candidate for hearing aids in both ears.” I felt like I had just aged thirty years in the past half hour.
The doctor was very nice about the whole situation. He was a little younger than me and also wore hearing aids. That helped my mental state a bit. I went back about a week later to pick them up, and I’ve worn hearing aids since then.
The doctor also showed me my audiogram with a “speech banana“ superimposed on it. This banana was not edible, (dad joke warning!) but it sure left a bad taste in my mouth. In short, vowel sounds tend to be easier to hear for most people because they are spoken at lower frequencies, but consonants are more important for understanding speech in conversation. The problem for me is that most consonants are outside of my hearing range. That’s why I often thought to myself that I could hear the words people were saying but couldn’t actually understand what the words were. It was slightly frustrating.
I had no idea how bad my hearing actually was until it got turned back on (so to speak). My hearing will never be “normal”…just better than it was. This past summer I got my third different set of hearing aids. They are much bigger than I’ve had in the past because my hearing is still getting worse.
So what about the stuffy feeling I had in my ears? I noticed right away that the feeling went away with my hearing aids in and came back when I took them out. It turns out that the stuffy feeling is one of many symptoms of hearing loss. That feeling that my ears were all plugged up was just in my head…or not in my head…well I guess technically it WAS in my head…the inner ear part of my head. Oh, whatever.
With the prevalence of earbuds and other listening devices in constant use, more and more young adults are losing their hearing at earlier ages. That’s an unfortunate trend. I can speak from experience. Take care of your ears. It’s worth it in the long run to unplug every once in a while.
I still like to (and do) listen to music quite a bit. It just takes more effort and planning than it once did. Over the ear headphones play a big role in my life. I can also stream music though my hearing aids, but even then I mostly can’t make out the words in the songs unless I have access to the lyrics. YouTube Music is really helpful with that part, but if I’m driving…I can’t really read the words while I listen. So I just listen to songs that have a good beat.
One of my favorite songs in high school was “Today” by Smashing Pumpkins. The very beginning of the song has a guitar riff that I know is there, but I can’t hear it anymore, even with my hearing aids in. It’s too high pitched. So I just imagine what I know it sounds like when I see the song come on. I hope my hearing doesn’t ever completely go out. It would be sad to not be able to hear my favorite songs…or more importantly, the voices of my family and friends.
I always try to find the positives when life gives me lemons. Since I don’t care for lemonade, it doesn’t always work, but it’s worth trying. The one positive thing I can say about my hearing loss is that it makes reading much easier. If something is too loud and I can’t focus, I just take out my hearing aids, tune out the real world, and lose myself in a good book for a while.
The sounds of silence aren’t all bad.
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Reflections Of A Middle Aged Nobody 