I have been wearing hearing aids probably ten years. Even with them, I am always pestering Lynn about what she just said. A friend just got new hearing aids and so did I. When I talk in an overly loud voice, Lynn inquires, "Are you wearing your hearing aids?"
I know that hearing aids were required to be by prescription but have recently been reclassified so that they can be purchased over the counter at much lower prices. I read Seth Horowitz "The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind" and it gave respect for the sense of hearing.
When I was walking out of the UWSP Audiology department, wearing my first hearing aids, I saw some lint on my shirt. I brushed it off with a folder and I was shocked by the loud noise. I realized there that there are tons of sounds and vibrations in the world and I am confident I only want to hear some of them, mostly speech and some music.
I was surprised when my neighbor across the street said that her dogs can hear my garage door opening from inside her house. I have the book by
Ed Yong "An Immense World" about animal senses but I haven't looked at it yet. I know there are waves of various sorts of radiation in my house even though I can only tell they are doing what I want when this computer and my Roku streamer successfully detect those waves and decode them into tv and internet signals.
I hear many sounds that I cannot identify and I suspect that my older ears can falsely "hear" sounds that didn't happen. Horowitz wrote that there are animals that do not develop any senses for light detection, as for instance those that live in totally dark caves and caverns. But, he wrote, there are no known animals that don't have vibration senses. I grasp that if you say "Boo!", I will experience a bodily reaction of several sorts: blood pressure, alerting, etc. But I am fascinated by the effect of speech on me now and over the years since childhood.
