A nice aimless story

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Partner and I were in Stop & Shop before Halloween.  He was in the deli, and I was in the grocery.  I was zipping through the candy aisle, and something caught my eye: the word JESUS, which seemed oddly out of place.  I stopped and examined the item: it was a box of Christian lollipops for distribution on Halloween, each wrapped in a cute little paper decorated with a pumpkin, bearing the legend: JESUS SAID: I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.

 

 

Aha.  I’ve heard of this.  Jesus-ween, right?  It’s an evil holiday, so let’s Christian it up.  You don’t see it much here in pagan / Catholic Rhode Island, where people often allow the Virgin Mary to camp out year-round in a bathtub on their front lawn, but it’s an interesting phenomenon.

 

 

So now Partner and I are done shopping and are rolling the cart out into the parking lot.  I am aware of Partner’s hearing difficulty; God knows I am hard of hearing too.   So I try to enunciate, as carefully as I can, as we walk: “They were selling lollipops with Bible verses on them, for Halloween.”

 

 

And Partner looks at me with total incomprehension and says: “Wally Cox?  Why did Wally Cox have Bible verses on him?”

 

 

Partner and I are the Burns and Allen of the Third Millennium.

 

 

Except I’m not sure which one of us is George and which one is Gracie.

 

 

I think we take turns.

 

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I can't hear a bloody word you're saying

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My grandma Minnie was mostly deaf. My father got progressively deafer as he grew older.

 

 

Bet you can't guess whose turn it is now!

 

 

It’s called “presbycusis.” It's not a complete insensitivity to sound; it's just a sort of auditory blur.

 

 

Noisy rooms are the worst. I was at a big party the other night, and the din was terrible. It was like sitting inside a tin shack with five hundred people yodeling at once. I could see everyone around me busily talking to everyone else, and I couldn't join in; the most I could do was nod and smile, or scream a few words to the person right next to me and hope I could make out a reply.

 

 

I felt isolated from the group. I felt lonely.

 

 

Partner has been mocking my condition for some years now, with witticisms like “Clean your ears out, grandpa.” Now he's getting deaf too, so we have the most wonderful conversations:

 

 

“We need peanut butter.”

 

 

“My brother called who on the phone?”

 

 

“You can't hear me. Get in here. You know you can't hear me from the next room.”

 

 

“We don’t need salt. What do you want salt for?”

 

 

(I won't tell you who was on which side of the conversation.  You'll have to work that out for yourself.)

 

 

Everything has a bright side, however. Outside noise used to bother me terribly; now I can't even hear it. It's like having a white-noise machine inside my head. And you know how Christmas lights are even prettier when they're a little out-of-focus? Well, conversations can be much more amusing when you hear people saying things like “Please touch my armadillo” and “I think Lucille Ball is the queen of Finland.”

 

 

Now: do we need salt? And how about that armadillo?

 

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