Therese Park

I finally got my hearing aids. Why am I bragging about it, you say?

It was a difficult decision to make, but like anything else in life, once the decision was made and the purchase transaction was complete and I brought them home, I was glad. Technically speaking, my husband owns them: It was his idea and he paid for them, but he rather keeps them in my ears, not in his. He bought them because I’ve been annoying him whenever we watched TV together by asking, “What did he say?” or “Why is that guy beating that other guy?” or “What’s funny?” and he had enough of it. With the hearing aids in my ears, he's definitely happier.

During the first week with hearing aids on, I was miserable. I felt as though I was being punished for something I didn’t do. Everything was too loud. I didn’t know that something as insignificant as water running from the faucet could sound like Niagara Falls. Even the grocery sacks rustled like trees in a torrential wind. With one squeal, my Quaker parrot sent me to the other end of the house.

On my next visit to the audiologist I complained about the loudness, and he adjusted the volume, plugging me into a machine, which was connected to his computer. I felt as though I were a rat going through an experimental test, but as a result, the noise is subdued. Still, when a truck passes my open window I feel as though I am in a war zone. Why do I deserve this?

I came up with a clever idea. By not wearing the hearing aids I am embracing Nature’s ultimate wisdom bestowed to older folks, in addition, I will get a taste of what the immortal composer Ludwig Van Beethoven might have suffered during nearly three decades of his 57 years.

Even after his death 182 years ago, Beethoven’s jewel like music is still performed all over the world. But what the great composer impresses me the most is the fact that he produced his most praised work¯the Choral symphony, his fifth piano concerto known as Emperor, his numerous string quartets, and his grandioso Missa Solemnis¯while he was stone deaf.

Beethoven was a genuis, you say?

A German philosopher wrote. “Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.” Growing up in the poor area of Bonn (Germany), Beethoven was an under priviliged, average child, whose alcoholic father often beat him for not practicing piano, and whose mother was always ill from tuberculosis. “Help yourself,” was his boyhood motto, which he carried with him through all the “complicated” tasks he had to tackle. He only had three years of schooling, yet he was the first composer who integrated the grand literary work of Goethe, Dante, and Schiller with his music.

I made a new resolution: Without the booming noises in my ears, I shall be more productive whatever I do in my old age. I should even write another book. Why not?

Most importantly, we are a happy family again; my husband can watch TV without my interruptions, I am happy that my quaker parrot and water from the faucet quieted down significantly, and I can “help myself.”

What about my hearing aids, you ask? They’re well and safe in their sturdy case