High-Tech Hope for the Hard of Hearing

When my mother’s mother was in her early twenties, a century ago, a suitor took her duck hunting in a rowboat on a lake near Austin, Texas, where she grew up. He steadied his shotgun by resting the barrel on her right shoulder—she was sitting in the bow—and when he fired he not only missed the duck but also permanently damaged her hearing, especially on that side. The loss became more severe as she got older, and by the time I was in college she was having serious trouble with telephones. (“I’m glad it’s not raining! ” I’d shout, for the third or fourth time, while my roommates snickered.) Her deafness probably contributed to one of her many eccentricities: ending phone conversations by suddenly hanging up.

I’m a grandparent myself now, and lots of people I know have hearing problems. A guy I played golf with last year came close to making a hole in one, then complained that no one in our foursome had complimented him on his shot—even though, a moment before, all three of us had complimented him on his shot. (We were walking behind him.) The man who cuts my wife’s hair began wearing two hearing aids recently, to compensate for damage that he attributes to years of exposure to professional-quality blow-dryers. My sister has hearing aids, too. She traces her problem to repeatedly listening at maximum volume to Anne’s Angry and Bitter Breakup Song Playlist, which she created while going through a divorce.

Read more at The New Yorker.