OPINION | Bob Hill: I got hearing aids just in time for National Deaf Awareness Month

The guy giving the test results, a bunch of crooked, dazed-looking patterns on the screen in front of him, said my hearing was down 38%. More than one-third. Getting old. Hearing aid time. Just in time for National Deaf Awareness Month.

Say what?

To begin with, "hearing aid" is an ugly description for a small, curved hunk of often expensive, electrified metal to be stuck behind the ear with a wire and pointed plastic thing attached.

Nobody wants to meet up with a bunch of aged friends to announce, "HEY, CHECK OUT THESE HEARING AIDS."

"Not so loud," a friend might reply.

"We can hear you."

Braggarts.

When I'm in charge of the geriatric world, hearing aids will be called " Sound Enhancers" or "Conversation Enablers." Forget the "aids" thing. It wrinkles the soul.

Yet, with age 82 lurking, and now often reading faces and gestures to know when to laugh in a conversation without hearing the words, the 38% thing seemed accurate.

So, sound enhancers it was.

The test guy said it would take some time to become accustomed to full hearing. He was right. The first night they were in we ate at one of those high-ceilinged, metal chaired, reverberating restaurants and it sounded like high noon in a boiler factory. Mind and body were fully rattled.

In subsequent days my ears squeaked, the floor below me creaked and my patience peaked. The best part of the day was the moment my sound enhancers went back in their little black recharge box at night. Constant adjustments required.

Still, the alternative was spending the rest of my life pretending to know when to laugh at jokes. So, I listened to my inner gods and took myself outside to listen to what Mother Nature had to say about all this.

Listening to mother nature

Call it transformative. The gravel driveway crunched nicely, the water in the garden fountains slurped with renewed vigor and the whole world sounded 38% better - crisper and more welcoming.

Save the airplanes and helicopters overhead and the interstate highways a few miles over.

But my ultimate outdoor hearing tests were the wind, the birds and our woods-pond waterfalls.

The change in hearing was dramatic. It was like not realizing how much your eyesight had diminished until cataract surgery. The hearing improvement was quick and glorious. The sound enhancers eventually more easily installed.

Which led me to the exact place where this is now being written—sitting in a blue metal chair perched on the edge of our lower pond with water falling off a rocky ledge across from me into dark water.

It is a fine Friday morning, sunlight flickering through the maple trees onto the wandering ripples. Can't hear the sunlight, although I am trying.

A soft breeze is bending the fern leaves across the way, dancing with pink hardy begonias. The feeding birds were here a little earlier this morning, Carolina wrens, American robins, Northern cardinals, blue jays, tufted titmouse and American crows, their identities and specific geographies first offered on my Merlin bird app.

But their calls are clearer to me now, by all accounts 38% so and that has made a difference.

The full morning orchestra includes the sound of running water. It begins up top in the upper pond, then flows, twists, bounces and sparkles down about 20 feet of flat rocks to the bottom falls, where our goldfish feed on its steady offerings.

Some dutiful research indicated goldfish hearing is good for about 15 feet, no sound enhancers required. Their flowing, curling orange presence is now part of my 38% awakening, part of the silent morning music.

The falling water above them makes a gurgling, rustling sound. Shut your eyes and listen, hear, think, imagine the falling water, the silver flashes, the white bubbles, the tiny blue flowers above it all. The world as it once was, restored and restful. Off in the trees a bird, maybe a Carolina wren, is in full agreement.

Bob Hill was a Louisville Times and Courier Journal feature writer and columnist for 33 years.

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This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: OPINION: Hearing aids just in time for National Deaf Awareness Month