My mom’s really upset about her new six million dollar hearing aids. She wishes she’d never bought them. They haven’t helped her hear any better, except for the sound of her own voice, which she never had trouble hearing in the first place. Now her voice “echoes like I’m in a metal box.” As her rapidly deafening son, I’m able to emphathize, not with the metal box part, but withnthe leaning your head down and saying “what?” every five seconds part.
She’s also very upset about the fact that the old bastard who lives at her assisted living facility yelled at her in the dining room in front of everybody. She told me she felt humiliated and who could blame her. For a year and a half now Mom’s been in charge of choosing the Opera Of The Week out of the old bastard’s record collection, which in turn gets played on the facility-wide Opera Day. That is, until the other day, when somer doddering fool who sits at my mom’s table at meal time told the old bastard that Mom “hated him”.
Apparently that was the last straw. I don’t know anything about the other straws, but Mom denied that she said that or that she feels that way. Knowing mom though, she probably said something. And also, and not necessarily related to this, Mom says the bastard always kisses the fool on the mouth whenever he greets her. Except for that mildly disturbing piece of information, the whole affair had the tone of a school playground. I told Mom that she was better off without somebody who would yell at her in public like that and Mom agreed, saying in passing that he was “arrogant” and a “very difficult man”.
That reminds me, I bought a Mac. It’s my first Mac and I’m feeling pretty good about it, although I haven’t really figured out how to use it and still approach it with Windows-brain, which is a real shame. Kinda like trying to understand the Torah via the New Testament. The computer sat in the box for three days after I bought it and only got set up after Anna demanded it. We worked on it together with me doing the heavy lifting and Anna pushing buttons even as I pleaded with her not to. Unfazed by the new Apple operating system, Anna plunged into iTunes, inadvertently tapped into the guy downstairs’ entire music library, which was cooler than mine by a factor of about a billion. This impressed her, as did the fact that it’s got a built in camera, which she immediately started goofing with. I loved watching her fool with the new hippest toy I’ve ever owned, my first electric guitar notwithstanding.
But I digress. It’s Summer and soon Mom will be back east on her annual pilgrimage to New England. For the two of us, hearing will only be an issue in the way that flat balls impede a lively tennis match. You just have to whack them a little harder. It’s actually better exercise. The bastard vs the fool, a match made in heaven.
