A few years back I had my ears tested and the guy who tested them, a professional ear-testing guy (I forget the term and I know I could look it up, but I have posts to crank out, and I’m falling behind), had kind of a grave look on his face during the test. I probably did, too.
You know how when you’re taking a multiple choice exam at school and you have this feeling that you’re getting all the answers wrong somehow?
That’s what this ear test was like, especially when he moved to my right ear.
My left ear was rated not great, definitely some hearing loss.
My right ear was basically terrible. Like, you can hear things, but everyone below the age of 20 will be like they’re talking inside a cone of silence or something. Just a huge swathe of my hearing range gone.
Why? I was in my 50s, which I have been assured is not old and is, in fact, the new 30s. Thirty-year olds don’t have bad hearing.
But I did listen to loud (and often terrible) pop music on headphones when I was young. Was the volume too high at times? Probably.
More recently, in 2010 I dated a guy for a while, and we went to a club that was having some kind of contest and there were judges at a table, plus very bug speakers pumping out music at very high volume. We were standing near one of the speakers. My right ear was the closest part of my body to it. I remember after leaving the club, my right ear rang for a long time. It felt like my hearing had been permanently damaged. Probably because it had been.
Then the guy said he wanted to break up. This admittedly had nothing to do with my ear (as far as I know).
The worst part of this loss of hearing was I could tell how bad it was by listening to some of my favourite music. For example, in the song “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd. It features Roger Waters singing the line, “Just a little pinprick” followed by what sounds like a triangle going PING. I could no longer hear the PING. Where once was a PING, now there was now nothing. It made me very sad.
Tonight, I did an experiment where I reversed the left/right channels of my earphones (by cleverly wearing them backwards) and played the song, because this would make the PING go to my left ear, which is not completely destroyed yet. I nervously waited for the song to get to that part, noting (not a music joke) that the song so far actually sounded pretty much the same, indicating that the mix was, as the professionals say, balanced.
When it got to the PING…I heard it! It was faint, but I definitely heard it. So now I can still hear the PING, as long as I listen to music in reverse stereo. Or maybe when I get some sort of hearing aids, which I am totally too vain and silly to do.
Anyway, in a world where so much seems to be collapsing all around us, it was nice to know the PING has not completely vanished for me.
