The alarm clock blared at seven o’clock this morning, but I didn’t hear it. My pillow muffled the sound. Turns out, I had rolled on the side with my “good” ear. The one that hears better than the other. The one that hears the alarm clock. The one that lay pressed into the pillow.
I slept through the alarm at 7:00, 7:15, and 7:30. When I woke up, it wasn’t to the shrill beeping clock or the radio dial cranked to full volume, but to the whine of my sweet little girl.
“Mommy,” she cried, “you overslept again.”
I wanted to blame it on the pillow, which had kept my good ear from hearing a blaring alarm clock. But I didn’t.
Crazy ears.
I breathed cool air into my steaming cup of coffee while fiddling with one of my hearing aids in the other hand. I put the listening device in my ear and switched it on. Nothing. Dead silence.
Out came the expensive contraption that looked like a sea shell with wires in it. The wires that were supposed to help me hear better. Could it have been a dead battery? Or worse, a hearing aid clogged with a blob of my ear wax? The most disgusting part of the morning was scooping wax out of this ear shell. After adding the fresh battery and scooping out ear boogers, I put the hearing aid back on. Nothing. Dead silence.
“What’s wrong with you?” I shouted at the expensive device. I threatened to throw it on the floor and stomp it into a mess of wires and ear shell plastic. But I didn’t.
Crazy ears.
The coffee spilled between my pant legs as I drove the kiddos to school. My sweet girl chatted on and on about so-and-so in her class and this-and-that at school. I nodded and smiled, marveling at every word she spoke. (I didn’t have a clue what she said.)
The car A/C blasted, the wipers squeaked against the pitter-pattering of rain on the windshield, and my baby son screamed in harmony with a Hannah Montana song on the radio. Plus, my hearing aid still didn’t work.
Stupid hearing aid.
I wanted to announce at the top of my lungs how much I loathed that hearing aid, to yell so loud, it would be heard over A/Cs, windshields, kids, and whiny teeny bopper music. But I didn’t. I just decided I was having a Bad Hear Day.
Trying to make light of the situation, I interrupted my sweet girl to tell her a knock-knock joke.
“Knock knock,” I said.
“Who’s there?” she asked with a smile.
“”Huh?” I said.
“’Huh’ who?” she answered, sweetly.
I squinted at her through the rearview mirror. “Huh? What did you just say?”
Oh, crazy ears…
Lipreading Mom 