We’ve all seen and heard the many ads these days for over-the-counter hearing aids. Now if we choose to not see a physician first, we can buy some of these gadgets and start to hear a bit better.
We’re told we can purchase them for small amounts of money instead of spending thousands on the hearing aids that are not over-the-counter, both of which often end up in junk drawers never to be used again after the first one or two tryouts.
All well and good, and those issues belong to the hearing aid business people. What I just so disagree with is their promoting their hearing aids as being “practically invisible” or even “so tiny they are completely invisible,” or even “no one will ever know.” And they have their actors or narrators saying those words in every single one of their ads without fail.
Why? Is there some shame in losing one’s hearing? It’s not a communicable disease, after all. Being hard of hearing is not Leprosy or Bubonic plague. It happens for a variety of reasons, many of which are because like it or not, some of us are too rapidly approaching geezerdom. It happens. I know there are things we can do to slow down, stop or prevent deafness but that’s not what I am curious about. I am curious about and bothered by those who maybe think going or being deaf is something we should hide. From whom and how come?
I know it’s happening to me, and so far I’m having some success with over-the-counter hearing aids. That may change in time, and perhaps deafness is inherited. Dr. Google says that under certain circumstances, it can be.
I had a cranky old grandfather of 97 named Walter Logan Scott, who carried a thick black square Bakelite thing sticking out of his shirt pocket attached to a very obvious black wire which was attached at the other end to a big nasty disgusting thing wired over and stuck into his ear. Ugh.
He also had an infuriating habit; when a family member or anyone actually, and especially his wife Anna Elizabeth Scott, dared to disagree with him on any subject ever, he’d simply pull that black chunky thing out of his shirt pocket and with a great showy flourish, would simply turn it off. Thus, Walter Logan Scott won all his arguments!
Am I inheriting this hard of hearing thing from dear old Grandfather Scott? I dunno. Maybe. But I do not and will not ever have selective hearing. Sounds and noises and conversations these days are just a bit duller than before, maybe vaguely garbled, but I’m nearly 87 so who knows? I wear an over the ear very visible OTC hearing aid, and it helps.
Those tiny inner ear things constantly fall out, although I am pleased that at least one part of my body is too small! And if people prefer to wear those invisible hearing aids, bravo to them. I just don’t think we should be guilted into using them for fear the “disgrace” of deafness should be discovered! So personally, I will never ever search out hearing aids that are proudly advertised as being invisible “to others.” What “others”? Who cares? When those great Madison Avenue advertising nerds tell their TV commercial actors to say that the hearing aids they are hawking are “invisible to others” it makes me feel as if losing one’s hearing is some sort of weird antisocial sin.
I mean it’s perfectly OK if people choose hearing aids that don’t show, but to promote them as something that one must hide from the world, makes me feel uneasy. Losing one’s hearing is awful, but it’s hardly a thing for which we should feel ashamed. So don’t.
LC Van Savage is a Brunswick writer.