Do You Hear What I Hear?

You probably hear more.

The sudden, constant tinnitus made me aware that I’ve been leaning forward over the tables at coffee shops wishing my friends weren’t such low-talkers. And accusing my husband of mumbling (though I really think he does.) 

So, a month ago I went to an audiologist to get a hearing test. 

The business-like audiologist didn’t waste time being friendly. She placed a set of headphones over my ear and went into the adjacent booth where she could watch me through a window. 

Through the headphones, I heard a voice that clearly belonged to the same guy who narrated every 60s educational film. 

He gave me list of words for me to repeat: 

“Say, padlock.”  

“Say, ocean spray.”  

Say, hurl.” 

Then the audiologist played a variety of high-pinched beeps and instructed me to press a button each time I heard one.

 The voice and the beeps played in my other ear, and then each ear again with background noise happening..

After the test was over, the audiologist returned to the room. She wasn’t friendlier. She said I have mild to moderate hearing loss and would be a candidate for hearing aids. 

She showed me a chart with a yellow banana shape in the middle like this:  

She said some words about the chart and the banana that I didn’t really understand. Normally, I ask about things I don’t understand, but I was feeling gut-punched by the news. I hadn’t expected that. I just let her tell me about how they sell hearing aids and shuffle me out. 

In truth,  I’m still pretty bummed if I let myself think directly about the hearing loss. I remember feeling the same way after a vision test in second grade, when I was told I needed glasses. I felt that I was at the beginning of something that was going to be an annoyance for the rest of my life, which (except for the decade after I got Lasik) was accurate. Bearable, of course Other people struggle with the exact same thing. But, still, annoying.  

Which is probably why I shall avert my eyes from that situation to make an observation about the test itself: At no point in the hearing exam did a woman speak.  Only the well-dictioned man from the 60s educational films got to speak.

Was a woman’s voice omitted because it has a similar frequency to a man’s? 

Or was my ability to hear a woman’s voice measured in the high-pitched beeps? “If you can hear R2D2, you can hear a woman.”  

Are hearing tests different everywhere you go? Or are they all the same, because everyone’s been passing around versions of the same test for decades? 

If you’ve taken a hearing test in recent years, please chime in and let me know your experiences.

In the meantime,  I’ll leave you with this link to a short poem by Elizabeth Bishop

xoxo,

Barrington