This plateau between Thanksgiving and Christmas finally permits me time to share an op-Ed recently published in The Connecticut Post and some of their regional syndicate papers.
During one of our many conversations on Gratitude last month (my daughter’s pre-K theme), something flipped inside my brain and I started thinking about my hearing challenges in a whole new way.
This inspired me to share my experience with Connecticut newspaper readers hoping that some might not only relate to my hearing frustrations, but also relate to my newfound perspective thereby lightening themselves of that burden.
It is a sincere attempt at spreading holiday cheer and positively contributing to the public discourse.
The following op-Ed first appeared in The Connecticut Post on November 27, 2023:
This Year I’m Thankful for Hearing
I complain a lot about hearing.
Especially in crowds, but also at movies, in most group conversations, and at any public function lacking microphones. I didn’t hear a single one of the groom’s vows at a wedding I attended last week.
There are certain scenarios where I’m just not good at hearing, so I complain. Usually to my wife (sorry darling).
My doctor says the mechanics of my ears are fine but when certain conditions exist (such as cold and flu season), my ears take it harder than most.
If we spoke at all in the first three-months of my daughter’s first year at pre-k, it’s almost certain I didn’t hear you.
I had regular hearing tests, tubes, and monitoring as a child but only sought care one time in my twenties (after a professor called-in for a class and only I couldn’t hear the speaker phone at the center of the conference-room table).
The doctor who treated me was an angry old German man who put a balloon up my nose and squeezed real hard to pop my ear drums loose.
My current doctor recoiled in horror when I told that story and revived my hearing this time with surgical tubes. He regularly monitors me even now that one of the tubes has fallen out and suggests various over-the-counter solutions to keep my ears and sinuses healthy.
You know that little asterisk on cold medications that says, “unless authorized by a doctor”? That’s written for me.
Two years ago I flew back from a Disney vacation and quickly lost my hearing. I didn’t know if it was from an infection swimming in the pool, something that happened on the plane ride home, or anything treatable at all.
I was scared that I might never get my hearing back as it became so bad that I stopped feeling safe driving on highways and put Closed Captioning on all my TVs.
It was extremely disorienting on its own but when the several weeks it took to get in with a specialist coincided with a frantic series of events resulting in Dad’s sudden death in an emergency room flooded by Covid, it became soulfully disorienting too.
I truly felt detached from the world that I could no longer hear.
In the two years since I’ve sought hearing treatment, representations from hearing-impaired people have strongly resonated with me.
My heart soared when the FDA increased access to hearing aids by reclassifying them as over-the-counter, I visually-applauded with both hands when CODA won Best Picture, and I deeply related to deaf Olympian Matt Klotz’s frustrations about living inside TV’s Big Brother house, which was full of whispers he couldn’t possibly hear.
Each of these representations have helped reverse my mindset this holiday season to stop complaining so much about my hearing and start being more thankful.
I encourage everyone to take a moment this holiday season, even when your whacked-out relative is espousing on some negative headline or divisive talking point that despite not wanting to hear what they’re saying, you’re thankful if you can.
Or at least that you could if everyone wasn’t talking all at once.
- Chris Gaffney
Chris is a stay-at-home dad, humorist and poet living in Wolcott with his wife and two young kids. His work may be found at www.uncommondiscourse.com.