“Well, you see, his lungs are used to handling oxygen for the blood supply for two arms and two legs. Now they only have to take care of one.” – The Six Million Dollar Man
Steve Austin got his arm from the second hand store.
I know that politics has been in the news. I also know that Microsoft© has had to rebrand Outlook™ to Lookout©. Finally, I also know that it’s highly likely that Jen-Hsun Huang is the one to have, ahem, pricked the A.I. bubble, so how about we switch gears into a bit more personal fare?
Let’s talk about ears.
Specifically, bionic ears. The Bionic Woman®, a television show that lasted three years back in the 1970s, gave the titular (heh heh) character a “bionic” ear, that is, an ear that can hear her husband’s eyes roll from two miles away.
There were also fembots®, and I hear Elon Musk is working on those, but that’s another story.
If Elon succeeds in developing the fembots™, the National Organization for Women© will demand the use of nuclear weapons on the factory.
Anyway, I bring up the bionic™ ear because I now have one. Or, in this case, two. I had mentioned a while back that I had jumped ship from Android© to Apple®, and one of the nice things about that is things work without having to force them to work. My son, Pugsley, gifted me with an iWatch© or whatever they call it, and it became useful as well, mainly for collecting data for the Deepstate© on my health status.
“Jeez, how much bacon does this guy eat?”
Not enough, Agent Jones, not enough.
Anyway, for some time my sons had been chiding me about my hearing. I’d turned on the captions and it was nice to be able to see what was being said when the family was talking. I told myself that this was usual, right?
Finally, it dawned on me that I was really having a hard time hearing The Boy (eldest son) as he spoke, even in the absence of a television going. So, I investigated hearing aids.
Reluctantly. I guess it’s my attempt to deny that I’m getting older, but, here we are anyway.
In my research, I found out that several models of the Apple© EarPlods could act as FDA approved hearing aids, and I could get them for $199. Worst case, I could give them to one of my sons if they didn’t work out, and actual OTC hearing aids cost, at minimum, double that.
What the hell.
The EarPlaids® arrived. I took them out of the tiny case, and put them in. Apple© helpfully ran me through setup, and soon enough I was taking a hearing test through the EarPads©. It provided a graph of my hearing loss.
I expected that it would have been caused by too many concerts and too much Iron Maiden© at too high a volume. The problem had been metal, just not Heavy Metal.
Nope. The graph showed hearing loss that was consistent with exposure to loud machinery.
Hmm, guess someone should have taken the “wear earplugs” a bit more seriously. The good news was that the loss was only “minor”. I don’t need them to hear most things, yet . . .
It was interesting listening to the world with new ears. I still heard the click of the keyboard as I typed, but now I clearly heard the rebound of the key, the click of the rocker switch as I turned on lights, or the crisp sound of my turn signal, which had slowly faded away but is now the same sound, essentially as when I was 18.
I also realize that I was making a hell of a lot of noise when I walked down the hallway. I was not nearly as sneaky as I thought. Agent Jones is now cross-referencing my bacon intake against my hallway noise and hearing frequency graph. Somewhere a report is being filed.
I guess if I were red-headed, I could be a Ginja.
I realized that I’d lost something else, though. Normally, when I’d write these posts I’d have a movie or television show or documentary going on in the background. Double tasking was easy, since writing and watching movies could go on at the same time, and I could follow both.
But not recently. Recently, I had to focus entirely on writing, and would just entirely ignore whatever show was playing. I’m putting that down to my hearing, because now I can do that again.
One potential link to the development of dementia in individuals is untreated hearing loss. The part of the brain that translates those multiple conversations, or that television show in the background just gives up as the input device (ears) stops giving it sound.
If left untreated long enough, something I read on the Internet says it takes years for the brain to re-learn that. But I forget where I read it.
Helen Keller once described a cheese grater as, “The most violent book I’ve ever read.”
For me, however, the compensating boost on the frequencies where the rumble of diesel engines and electric pumps had crunched my hearing was huge. It immediately caused the tinnitus I’d had since I was a kid to disappear when wearing the EarProds©.
That was kinda cool.
The Mrs., however, was less than impressed. “You know if you had a real hearing aid, people would feel sorry for you rather than thinking you were just another asshole wearing earbuds.”
I thought that over. I don’t want people feeling sorry for me, so I answered, “But I am an asshole, honey. And now I can ignore people on purpose.”
She shook her head and walked off. And I could hear her eyes rolling as she headed down the hallway.
Man, having bionic© ears is awesome.
