There are times when we become our parents.\u00a0\u00a0 Like if the house is too chilly and you end up putting on a sweater instead of messing with the thermostat?\u00a0 Right, stuff like that.\u00a0 When my mother became a woman of a certain age and her hearing aids started squeaking whenever I hugged her, I pretty much decided that hearing aids were not for me\u2014EVER!<\/p>\n
But God has a sense of humor, and He pays attention when people say stupid stuff.<\/p>\n
Time passed, years passed.\u00a0 Shortly before my parents moved into assisted living, her hearing aids went missing, twice.\u00a0 Once they were found hiding in the vegetable bin of the fridge and the second time they turned up in a frying pan.\u00a0 When my mother was cutting up Jimmy Dean sausage links to put in the freezer for handy breakfast making later, she evidently put her hearing aids down on the kitchen counter and dropped them into the baggie right along with the sausage slices.\u00a0 The problem is, several weeks elapsed between the time the hearing aids went missing and the time they reappeared.\u00a0 I remember asking my mother why she didn\u2019t get a replacement.\u00a0 Guess what?\u00a0 At the time I had NO idea how expensive hearing aids were\u2014$3500 a pop\u2014which must have been a staggering expense to people living on somewhat limited means.\u00a0 Fortunately her hearing aids came out of the frying pan prior to being cooked, and they worked just fine for as long as she needed them.<\/p>\n
And then more time passed.\u00a0 I noticed that the dialogue on television shows was becoming more and more incomprehensible.\u00a0 Why did all those people mumble so much?\u00a0 Why did BILL mumble so much?\u00a0 Why was I always saying WHAT?\u00a0 And when he had the temerity to suggest that perhaps, maybe, it might be a good idea to have my hearing tested \u2026 That went over like a pregnant pole-vaulter!<\/p>\n
And then came a fateful dinner in Tucson, Arizona where we were joined by our daughter and son-in-law and his parents.\u00a0 It was a noisy Mexican restaurant with lots of hard surfaces and lots of noise.\u00a0 At some point I heard Jon\u2019s father say something about \u201ccamels in Virginia.\u201d\u00a0 Taken aback, I said, \u201cThey have camels in Virginia?\u201d\u00a0 He looked at me as though I had recently arrived from another planet and said, very plainly, \u201cI LEFT MY CAMERA IN VIRGINIA!\u201d\u00a0 I started wearing hearing aids shortly thereafter, squeak and all.<\/p>\n
I keep my hearing aids on the side table next to my chair in the family room.\u00a0 Shortly after Jojo, our long-haired dachshund, came to us as a puppy, I went into the bathroom to shower.\u00a0 When I came out a few minutes later, one of my hearing aids\u2014the $3500 kind\u2014was in pieces on the floor.\u00a0 When we went to the hearing aid place, they told us it was still covered under the loss waiver so the replacement cost $700 instead of the full meal deal.\u00a0 We counted ourselves lucky, and I began storing my hearing aids in a glasses case still on the same old side table.<\/p>\n
And that worked just fine, up until Saturday morning of this past week.\u00a0 That day, when I opened the glasses case there was only one hearing aid\u2014the left one.\u00a0 The right one had gone AWOL.\u00a0 I suspect that the stabilizing wire got caught on the sleeve of my sweater and landed outside the box.\u00a0 We searched diligently: removed all the cushions from my chair; moved all furniture; searched up and down the hallway; looked everywhere I had walked.\u00a0 Nothing.\u00a0 No sign of it.<\/p>\n
Naturally this was Saturday morning before Labor Day and three days before the start of a book tour.\u00a0 I had just read an ad in my Guideposts about a $200 hearing aid that can be recharged with a USB port.\u00a0 Knowing I couldn\u2019t get into my regular hearing aid place before Tuesday, I called and ordered one.\u00a0 It arrived by mail last night\u2014Wednesday.\u00a0 It\u2019s a little clunky\u2014larger than the high-priced model, but it works.<\/p>\n
I ordered the replacement on Saturday morning.\u00a0 On Sunday afternoon, the missing hearing aid magically reappeared in the family room, next to Jojo\u2019s food dish.\u00a0 We had searched every inch of that room, so she must have hidden it away somewhere in the meantime.\u00a0 It was slightly crunched\u2014make that thoroughly crunched\u2014but miracle of miracles it still works, more or less.\u00a0 It\u2019s a little glitchy at times, making me glad to have a pair and a spare.<\/p>\n
I only wish there had been a two-hundred dollar replacement option for my mother back when she could have used one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are times when we become our parents.\u00a0\u00a0 Like if the house is too chilly and you end up putting on a sweater instead of messing with the thermostat?\u00a0 Right, stuff like that.\u00a0 When my mother became a woman of a certain age and her hearing aids started squeaking whenever I hugged her, I pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[76,81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pets","category-rants-and-raves"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-nr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1454,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions\/1454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}