Boss Radio

Stereo is wasted on me, my right ear is way less efficient than my left ear so I can't locate the source of sound. It doesn't bother me overmuch, it's just another of the things that goes with time. Some people's bodies let them down, with others it's their senses, but nothing lasts forever and at least for the present I do have a good range of hearing. I shouldn't be able to still hear the sound of crickets but I can, so you loose a few, you don't loose a few.

I'm not sure what the strange thing people have about admitting to damaged hearing is. You see people wearing glasses all the time and they don't seem to be embarrassed about it, but hearing aids? Oh no. Mustn't admit to hearing loss.

I'm telling you this because I just hurt my voice. After a lifetime of singing without a hint of vocal injury, I've hurt my voice shouting at my mum.

She's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. She was having trouble hearing certain frequencies, mainly those croaky voices that certain starlets seem to have, and instead of admitting there was a problem she blamed the girls for not speaking properly; bad diction, American accents, anything rather than admit she couldn't hear them. In fact she kept saying that she could hear them, she just couldn't tell what they're saying.

So she turned up the volume of the TV.

Within months she was complaining about some male characters with similar voices to the croaky girls and responded in exactly the same way. Up went the volume of the TV again. Over the space of the day it would go up from its usual 27% to over 60% as she inched the volume up each time she couldn't hear someone. It was way to loud for me, I had to start wearing ear plugs. She said I was doing it just to be silly, and that the volume couldn't be hurting my ears.

Now she's complaining about newsreaders. They don't speak distinctly apparently, they gabble, she has to turn up the volume to hear what they're saying.... And it doesn't seem to occur to her that the louder she makes the TV the more damage she's doing to her ears. I'm now wearing heavy duty earplugs and the people in the street can listen to whatever we're watching with ease, it's no wonder the neighbours don't like us.

Both my sister and I have tried to persuade mum to have her hearing checked, she simply 'remembers' having it checked quite recently and coming though the test with flying colours, any attempt to push the matter is greeted with a sudden almost dramatic loss of temper.

I don't get it, because my mum is only an extreme example of something that I've witnessed around me for years. The eyes are one thing, but admitting that your ears are going, that's like getting old or something. No one will admit to hearing loss, even if you've just been speaking to them and they've not heard a thing you've said, they'll try to 2nd guess you rather than admit that their ears are little dodgy.

My sister is considerably less patient than me. One day mum said that she hadn't heard what little sis had said to her because her mind was "Elsewhere at the moment". My sister asked her if she'd really rather people thought that she was daft, not deaf.

"Yes!" said mum, angry at the suggestion that she might in any way think otherwise.