I was sitting on the sofa tonight checking my messages, trying to ignore the noise of the TV and the barking of dogs outside and the dishwasher clattering in the kitchen behind me. And doing a very poor job of it.
Before looking up from my tasks, I was shaking my head at my 20-year-old daughter who was once again watching some silly cartoon on TV. She is an ardent fan of everything Spongebob and I frequently turn on the TV and find it tuned to Nickelodeon. The words, "Aren't you a little old to still be watching those cartoons?" had already formed on my lips.
But to my surprise, she wasn't watching a cartoon. They were real people. They only sounded like cartoons to me.
My frustration erupted a while later, when in the middle of my listening practice, I unplugged the audio cable connecting my cochlear implant processor to my computer. "Oh my gosh!" I cried out to my husband. "Listen to this!" His expression was one of bewilderment. "What about it?" he asked.
I forget other people don't hear what I do... The garbled, warbling chaos of sound was actually a man saying, "There are many ways to skin a cat." No way.
My brain is making sense of a good deal of sound and speech, I know, but impatience is my black beast -- my curse.
I'm tired. So tonight, I just unplugged and let it lie.
Goodnight, Alvin --
and Simon and Theodore.
No comments:
Post a Comment