Me and my hearing aids

I own hearing aids but I am not a hearing aid wearer – if the NHS ordered me some pink hearing aids, I might possibly become a hearing aid wearer… they’d match my phone then…

Is that shallow? Who cares!

My hearing aids currently sit in a box by my bed and rarely come out of it – sure sometimes I wear them for the novelty factor, for when I want people to look at me, see them and look away really quickly… or for when I’m having an EDD (Extra-Deaf Day) after a particularly loud night out with housemate.

Although my most recent pair are more tolerable, one of the reasons I hate wearing my hearing aids so much is they make everything so loud – so loud in
fact that I fall over! But then, even without my hearing aids, certain things still make me fall over!

I first discovered my knack of falling over to loud noises when I was in a nightclub during Freshers’ week – it was of those fabulous 90s places with fabric flames that billowed unrealistically and lashings of Woody’s and WKD…

It also had podiums, which were situated on top of giant speakers – and it was these speakers that were my downfall literally! There I was slinking along in my giant flares and platform trainers (so, so cool) when suddenly, as I walked past the speaker, music thumping, I found myself flat on the floor… looking like a complete idiot… and I learnt something

Loud music + me = no balance

That learnt, I moved on and was quite happy knowing that should a fighter jet fly over, a police van (I can hear those klaxon-sounding sirens) or a big motorbike come flying past, I should brace myself like that scene in Mary Poppins, where everyone holds on to bits of the house – only in my case, I hold a lamppost, person, my brains and occasionally if I am not quick enough, the floor! Oh the shame!

And then, I got new hearing aids – with promise of being able to watch TV without subtitles and birds singing – the latter I was really excited about as I have never heard a bird sing…
However, my hearing aids were so loud that, on coming out of the clinic, a bus went past and I fell over…

Trying to give them a chance I went to the park to hear birds… and a police car went by and I fell over. So I went home and tried to listen to the TV but I had to have it on so quietly, because my hearing aids made it so loud, that even housemate would have struggled to understand what Paul Robinson was saying.

So I put them in the box and accepted that life has pros and cons – the pros of being hearing-aidless by far outweight the cons…

I fall over less, I fall over less, and um… I fall over less.