Every so often when I’m having a great time with friends, somehow we get onto the topic of other people they know who can’t hear– maybe a parent or an elderly uncle or someone like that. Invariably a comment will be made that this person can really hear. He or she isn’t as hard of hearing as they make out to be. They have “selective” hearing. HAHA.
HAHA.
Selective hearing.
This never fails to make me cringe.
It’s not selective hearing at all. It’s normal hearing loss.
Not to be a wet blanket or anything, but at that moment I usually feel the need to explain the speech banana. How one of my low tones is normal and how I’m deaf in the high tones and that hearing aids can’t offer enough amplification so that I can hear s,f,t, or k– but that without hearing aids I can hear the m and b sounds. And that this means if someone says, “Kate took the cake” I won’t understand, but if they say “Bob’s bringing mom home,” I will. And also if there is a lot of background noise, like someone coughing while someone else is talking, I might not even hear that much.
The speech banana
If you are close to someone with hearing loss please try to familiarize yourself. The only thing worse than having hearing loss is being accused of pretending to have hearing loss.
And WHY would someone DO that anyway? Especially someone who never pretended to have hearing loss in the past??
