IMHO: Let’s hear it for hip and cool hearing aids

Okay, let’s get it out there – I wear hearing aids.  I mostly wear them because I teach classes at least half of whose members are young women, and they tend to speak softly in higher frequency ranges that my unassisted ears often can’t pick up.

I tell my students that the hearing loss I suffer is what you get when you’ve played bass guitar in front of a giant speaker stack for 20 years. This is true.  What’s also true is that I have never played in a rock band – but I just happen to have the same kind of hearing loss as people who have.

I have a friend who was getting deafer and deafer but refused to get hearing aids because he said they were “terribly ageing”. He finally got fitted out when someone told him there are few things more ageing that constantly asking people to repeat themselves with one hand cupped around your ear.

Now it seems, there’s no reason to look anything but hip and cool when your hearing starts to recede, along with your hairline.

Apple has released new airpod models that can be used as hearing aids and there’s a workaround for Samsung Galaxy earpods too. Not only is this one of the few occasions where an Apple product is a lot cheaper than the alternatives, it has the added virtue of making you look younger.

That said, there is nothing shameful about hearing loss.  It’s often a direct result of what doctors call TMB – too many birthdays.

And there’s very strong evidence to suggest that deafness and tinnitus contribute to dementia, if only because of the social isolation.

Which brings me to my rant for this week (No, that wasn’t it).

I am seeing more and more late middle-aged men sitting in cafes watching videos or taking Zoom calls on their phones with the device on speaker and the volume turned up to the max.

This is annoying because, while it’s great that they have mastered technology to enrich their lives, that expertise has not extended to wearing earbuds or headphones. 

Thus I am treated to the tinny soundtrack of some crap reality show, reruns of an ancient sitcom or both sides of a conversation about the dreary minutiae of a stranger’s life.  

To make matters worse, they have cranked up the volume because they are suffering hearing loss.

So here’s my solution, check out airpods, or a cheaper alternative, or get hearing aids (like mine) that you can Bluetooth to your phone for calls, videos, podcasts and audio books. They are almost invisible to everyone except your hairdresser.

And if anyone says they make you look old, come up with a fantastic story about the heavy metal band that you used to play in, or the warship on which you were engineer, or the battle in which you fought where the artillery shells were raining around you.

Get with it, hear me! You’ve got nothing to lose except the filthy looks from people like me who are having to plug their ears to keep your noise out.

IMHO is JimmyT’s occasional, opinionated and self-indulgent look at life beyond strata. Let him know what you think about his ramblings on the Flat Chat Forum.