A crochety old woman

Aug 25, 2011

I'm feeling old and decrepit today.

This morning I drove to Jackson, TN (145 miles round trip) for a hearing test and hearing aid consult. When I was tested last year, I had a moderate to severe hearing loss in high frequency range (like women's and children's voices), but I couldn't afford to pay for hearing aids. Since then I've gone on dealing with the frustration of working in retail (female & juvenile customers, lots of background noise) with this hearing deficit, and saving my pennies for hearing aids.

When I set off this morning, I was in a good mood, thinking about how my life will improve when I can hear and understand speech properly again. But the traffic in the Jackson area, and my confusion over the MapQuest directions (which failed to explain that the street I was looking for is called something else at the point where I would turn onto it), put a dent in my good mood. When I finally got to the hearing center and was crossing the waiting room to the reception desk, a man burst out of the door to the exam/consult rooms at about 90 mph. The door, then the man, flew into me and nearly knocked me over. The man continued running, saying, "Oh, sorry," while the office personnel laughed. That's right, they laughed.

If I had been a 88-yr-old client instead of a 58-yr-old, and had been knocked to the floor and broke my hip, would they have laughed?

Suddenly I understood my elderly mother's all-consuming fear of falling. Something that wouldn't have bothered me at all (other than the rudeness) 20 years ago was now a fearful experience.

When I got to the reception desk, one of the office workers said, "That was funny! Are you OK?"

It was funny?

I said, "I'm OK, but it wasn't funny. It was rude."

Dead silence, blank looks. I can understand the lack of understanding or consideration if I were in a different setting, say a bar or a bowling alley, but this was in a quasi medical facility, a non-profit hearing & speech center staffed with professionals: an audiologist, a speech pathologist, a bi-lingual receptionist. Their silence made me feel like I was being a crochety old woman. Too bad. I guess I am a crochety old woman.

1 Comment