The Errant Hearing Aids

I hate hearing aids.

I do.

You can hear every rattle and scratch,

crackle and crunch

but you can’t tell what people are saying

around the dinner table.

Sometimes they’re on and sometimes they’re off

for no apparent reason.

They hide from you and

get lost in the strangest places.

For example,

you’re not supposed to use hairspray

with hearing aids in

so I take them out.

If I don’t have pockets

I might wind them in the

stretchy waistband of my pants

so the hairspray doesn’t hit them.

Then if you’re, say around 83-years-old,

you forget about them completely.

An hour later as we’re zooming up the freeway,

I remember them.

WHERE ARE THEY?

Was I upstairs or down?

I feel in my waist band and find the hearing aid.

Whew.

It scares me too.

Where is the transmitter?

In the hallway, kitchen, garage, driveway?

Neither Amy nor I has our cell phone

so we borrow a cell phone and

call DeRay.

He looks for a good half-hour.

On the way home,

I’m rubbing my thighs and

 feel something. .

"Amy, I think I found my transmitter!”

I reach down my pantleg and

HALLALUJAH!

I’m always going to put them someplace safe.

They are not going to hide from me ever again.

I promise.

The very next morning,

as the water hits my head in the shower

and after Ed and I have been swimming

for an hour and ten minutes,

I touch the hearing aid in my left ear.

I am sick.

I didn’t have the transmitter in

because I was listening to books on tape

while eating breakfast.

“I need Elder Care,”

I moan to DeRay & Amy when we walk in the door.

Amy put it in rice.

We’ll know in a few days.

Do you see why I hate hearing aids?

They are so naughty.