Hearing Friends

There has been quite a lot of comment in the British Press during this past week on the problems of excessive noise. Inevitably, a couple of writers felt they should point out that there could be some upside in being deaf. Amazing how people with normal hearing so often say this, isn't it? However, it made me wonder how many positives I could find. I started by asking Tricia, my wife, who has had to live with my progressive hearing loss for more than 30 years what ideas she can offer. I quote them below in the hope that they may prompt you to add some of your own thoughts.

A few positive sides of being deaf if you are a husband. If you are a wife they work equally well the other way round 

(NOT to be taken personally or too seriously)

-          You can nod wisely to bores while thinking of something totally different, secure in the knowledge that they won’t take offence if you reply with a non sequitur when they pause for breath

-          You can ignore requests from your wife for money

-          Ditto to requests to do things you don’t want to do, especially little jobs around the house which she can perfectly well do herself

-          You can feign total ignorance of arrangements, whether you really know about them or not

-          You can nod off in polite company with the excuse that it was just too tiring trying to keep up with three conversations at once (and possibly in three different languages as far as you were concerned)

-          You can avoid going to events such as parent/teacher evenings because you won’t be able to hear what’s going on

-          You can sleep with the window open even though the dawn chorus and other urban or rural noises (especially if you overlook a golf course) wake up everybody else

-          You can switch yourself off at discos and boogey away happily while everyone else is sustaining extreme aural damage

-          You can enjoy a blissful undisturbed night’s sleep while your wife deals with possible burglar noises, alarms going off, emergency police visits, partying neighbours, children being sick, and other nocturnal nuisances

-          You can continue your preferred line of conversation oblivious of attempts by others to steer you onto another subject

-          If you are unable to use the telephone effectively, you can delegate all arrangements, appointments, changes and cancellations of plans – regardless of how much ingenuity and bare-faced lying may be required of the person carrying out such delegations

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