A Comedy Cheer-Up for Those Who Need Hearing Aids

If you need hearing aids, or know someone who does, it’s going to be okay. How do I know this? We have all kinds of hearing loss in our family. My Grandpa had hearing loss. He could barely hear anything. He had 50 grandchildren and because he was mostly deaf, he thought all of his grandkids were extremely well behaved. He also thought nobody could hear him belch, or make other noises I won’t bring up out of respect.

My Grandpa’s favorite questions was, “What?!!” My Grandma would ask him, “Ivan, do you want to watch the news? It’s 6:00 o’clock!”
“What?”
“It’s time for the news!”
“What?!!”
“The news!!!”
“Well, I’m not hungry.”

Then there’s my sweet wife who discovered that she was hard of hearing. None of us knew she was hard of hearing because she was so good at reading lips. But I should have picked up on the clues. There were many days I would scream, “How was your day!” She would scream back, “Stop mumbling!”

My wife was very young, in her late 20s, when she was diagnosed with nerve-damage in her ears and was given hearing aids. The transition was awkward and took several weeks, but the hearing aids changed her life for the better. Before getting hearing aids, a train could hit the side of the house and my wife wouldn’t even flinch. After getting hearing aids, she would regularly get an annoyed look on her face, get out of her chair, find me somewhere in the basement, and say, “For the love of Pete, you are breathing so loudly! Could you stop?!!” I tried not to take that personally.

Before hearing aids, my wife could not hear subtle sounds like the fan of a computer, or the crackle of dry leaves, or the alarm of a kitchen timer as she was baking cookies. After hearing aids, the beautiful sounds of everyday life were once-again available to her. And the cookies were edible again.

If you have difficulty hearing, you might be worried that hearing aids will make you look weird. But the truth is that new hearing aids really don’t look bad at all. In fact, most people don’t even know that my wife is wearing them. I even forget my wife is wearing hearing aids until I try to kiss her ear and the high-pitched squeal reminds me. It’s like an affection alarm. When it goes off my 16-year-old says, “Ew!”

Hearing aids have really cool features now. My buddy Matt has bluetooth on his hearing aids. He doesn’t think I know, but I’m pretty sure he listens to the game during church. He’ll blurt out “Yeah! Yeah! Go! Aw! Bad call!” The pastor told me that he wishes everyone could be that enthusiastic about his preaching. I just nod.

So, if you need hearing aids, don’t despair. They can change the quality of your life. Not only can you hear better, but your life now has a remote control. Got a whiney toddler? Turn the ears down. Joke telling husband? Turn the ears down. Teenager? Turn the ears down, take out the batteries, smash the hearing aids, burn the remnants, and wheeze maniacally for several minutes.

Hang in there.