I am a worrier. Not on a Woody Allen scale, fortunately, but somewhat constantly. About little and big things. About things I can control and things I can’t. I even worry that I worry too much.Anyway among the cacophany of anxieties shrieking in my ear is my fear of hearing loss. I have long feared that my bad habit of ipodding (and before that listening to my discman and before that my walkman and before that, at the tender age of 10 or so, being rather attached to a very clunky but cute tape player I used to carry about with me - yes, really) is damaging my ears. Rather I think it has damaged my ears already, partly because I listen to it much too often and at disturbing volumes, and partly because my hearing is actually quite poor. I don’t know if I’ve always been in the habit of watching people’s lips when they talk if there’s a lot of background noise, or if my tendency to ask people to repeat themselves is a new development but I have noticed both of these things over the past few years. And it scares two or three types of shit out of me.
So new research showing one in five French teenagers suffers from hearing priblems because of exposure to excessively loud volumes on personal stereos and night clubs should scare me further, right? Well you’d think so but you’d be underestimating just how petty I am.
The way I see it my ears are already screwed. Bless their cotton socks they’ve served me well these past 25 years and I have rewarded them by blasting them with regular doses of Phoenix, The Libertines and, in my younger years (I’m sorry, guys) anything from Europe to Bros. So all I see in this latest piece of research is the prospect that I won’t be alone, adrift on a soundless world all of my own. I will have company.
Even better it seems like a lot of them will be French.
7 comments:
don't worry kate, i find being partially deaf is mostly quite helpful, especially when your boyfriend is telling you something boring about board games or when the neighbours are playing power ballads. oh anthony callea, how do i love thee, let me count the ways.
I think I'd prefer to go blind than deaf. I couldn't imagine a world without sounds, without music. But, er, sorry Kate, this probably isn't helping much
Well I'd prefer to go deaf rather than blind because blind is way too scary and I wouldn't be able to read but, still, neither is actually on my wish list...
I vote deaf over blind. It's not that I'm scared of the dark or anything but...
I can't believe we're deciding on which sense we'd rather lose, as if we'd have a choice. Is this what they mean by privileged?
Jesus this conversation took a downward turn. PS I'd rather lose a leg.
Leg. I'd lose an ear but not an eye (you can cover absence of ear with careful hairstyling). I'd rather have part of liver removed than lose a kidney (since livers regenerate). I would rather die than have the whole voicebox thing with that funny little robot talking machine you hold to your throat because that would just be scary.
Have I covered everything?
You've thought this all through before.
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