Saturday, May 5, 2007

Wad You Say?

The father of a good friend was hard of hearing after all the up close and personal gun blasts he had to endure during WWII. By the time he was in his sixties he was wearing hearing aids and reading the closed captioning. 

I know my hearing is not quite as sharp as it used to be. But I spent the war years, the Vietnam war years, on Rush Street in Chicago.

Dancing next to a six foot speaker in the basement of a club back in the sixties shut down my right ear for a few days after an especially loud riff. I actually felt a kind of explosion on the right side of my head when the music went AWOL. Not that I want to compare my experience with combat, but there is a certain ironic twist to losing one's hearing during the, uh, dating wars. 

Now when I hear ringing I have to check first to see where it's coming from before answering the door or my phone. And I notice that I've taken to watching someone's lips while they speak -- especially my Korean mechanic, although I don't think I could understand him anyway. Luckily he gives me a computerized receipt so I can find out what he did to my car. 

I often keep the TV on while I work on the computer. That's when I realized that what people say isn't what I hear. How do I know this?

A commercial came on for some entertainer who is coming to town. In a voice that reflected the excitement and enthusiasm you might expect, the TV announcer exclaimed that you could go to TICKET BASTARD to buy your passes for the concert. But you better get there fast, because they're almost sold out.

Yeah, TICKET BASTARD. 


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh I don't think that is poor hearing...you are just hearing freudian slips! HA! Many years of using them??? :-) You know we hear what we want to hear! :-)

Man ya, I remember my hearing being gone for days after I went to a concert. Now geez these theaters are just so loud. These kids will be deaf at 40! Maybe they already are from IPODs & that is why they have to put it higher? Or may they are just trying to drown out the talkers (noooo...not me!)

Actually I think you have the name right considering how much they rape us for in ticket pricing! HA!

It is amazing how much students don't hear! HA! I have this gift of hearing men's voices in the back of the room! HA!

You were on Division....maybe it is something else?! HA! Were you in one of those Go-Go Cages? :-)

Anonymous said...

LOL, nice name for a ticket agent!

I damaged my hearing running through the cloud of debris and noise on 9.11 in lower Manhattan. Luckily the permanent loss turned out to be minimal, but for a while there, I was down to 60% of my original hearing. Think I'll pass on Ticket Bastard, lol.

Anonymous said...

I can hear a mouse fart in the desert at high noon.  sigh!   Anne

Anonymous said...

huh?    Did you say something?

Anonymous said...

I have to ask people to repeat things all the time. There's nothing wrong with my hearing. I just like to annoy them until they learn not to talk to me. It works. Ask my wife.

Anonymous said...

   It kills me when I'm sitting at a light, and have one of those rolling rap-blasters pull up next to me ... with a kid in the back seat.  I screwed up my own ears in my concert days, but at least I didn't mess with my kid's hearing.  I can't scream THAT loud.  Tina

Anonymous said...

My hearing loss is more of a selective sort.  I have to select who I am going to listen to in the chorus of voices around me all telling me the same story about who hit who first, who got in trouble in school today, how hungry or thirsty any given child is, and how so-and-so is "hogging the bathroom."

In the middle of it all, the phone rings.

If I had a hearing aid, I'd turn it OFF.
Anna

Anonymous said...

in my opinion
concerts were louder
in the past