I’m pretty sure that I have a degree of hearing loss. So far my family has not been complaining about my lack of hearing, and often family members are aware of problems before the individual experiencing hearing loss. I also have had some very elemental testing done as part of my annual wellness exam with my family physician. However, I have not had a full evaluation with an audiologist, so I don’t have an accurate measurement of what hearing loss I may have.

I grew up around airplanes and learned to fly as a teenager. There was plenty of engine and propellor noise in my growing up years, though I did wear noise cancelling headphones as an adult pilot. I operated many different kinds of farm equipment during my teenage years and spent days doing field work in older, less effectively muffled tractors. I also have done quite a bit of shop work, including operating metal cutting saws, grinders, and drills. In my young adult years, I operated a chainsaw without using hearing protection.

These days I am careful to wear hearing protection when operating the mower even though I have mowed a lot of lawns without hearing protection. I carry hearing protection with my chainsaw supplies and always use it when cutting. We keep hearing protection in the shop and use it when operating power tools. I am aware that there is much that I can do to protect my hearing and I am trying to be proactive about protecting what hearing I do have.

Nonetheless, I am aging, and hearing loss is a normal part of the process. I’ve noticed that I don’t always hear everything when we go into a crowded venue, such as a busy restaurant or the airport. When we have flown on airplanes, I can hear and understand the cabin announcements on the newer planes, but occasionally we will find ourselves on a plane where I cannot understand announcements on the pa system.

I often have trouble communicating at drive-through restaurants, but I don’t think that is necessarily a sign of poor hearing. Those speaker systems are very low quality in many places.

Yesterday we went with our kindergartner granddaughter to a birthday party at a bowling alley. It was a large bowling alley with dozens of lanes and many people who were not part of the birthday enjoying bowling. In addition to the bowling, the venue had a large number of arcade games with bright lights and loud sounds. To top it all off, there was music playing throughout the facility. They had turned up the volume to make the music heard over the bowling and arcade machines. I could hear the music, but the sound system wasn’t the best and I couldn’t understand the words of the songs. To top it all off, there were 20 or so 5 and 6 year old children running around yelling to each other and to their parents loud enough to be heard over the music over the arcade machines and over the bowling. It was a very loud place.

I wasn’t the only one who had trouble hearing. At one point we made an inquiry of a staff person who leaned over the counter to get his face as close as possible to ours so we could hear him. He commented about it being so loud that he couldn’t hear people’s requests.

The experience made me wonder of the occupational safety and health authorities had ever measured the sound in a place like that. Federal and state laws require employers to provide hearing protection to people who work with heavy and loud machinery. It certainly seemed to me that working in that bowling alley would be hazardous to the hearing of employees and that they should have their hearing protected. I don’t know if I could stand to work in that setting. I found myself exhausted from being there and I didn’t spend much time there at all. Susan was present for a little more than two hours. I ran some errands during the early part of the party and found relief when I left the bowling alley. Still, after we left the party and gave our granddaughter a ride home, I was tired from the experience.

Since I couldn’t hear well and couldn’t follow the things the hosts of the party were saying about presents and goodie bags and cake and other things, I spent my time in the bowling alley watching people in general. I noticed that the party organizers never did attempt to sing “Happy Birthday!” It would have been a struggle over all of the other noise. I also was fascinated to watch a group bowling a few lanes down from the party area. It was a group of friends. Several of them appeared to be differently abled. I suspect that some were adults who had experienced brain injuries or who were born with disabilities. It is possible that the group was part of an outing from a workshop or a living situation for persons living with disabilities. They appeared to be having a good time bowling and were enthusiastically supporting and cheering for one another. There was one man who was wearing a set of noise-cancelling headphones all of the time. I noticed that his friends would touch him gently or wave their hands to get his attention and tell him when it was his turn to bowl. I know that some kinds of disabilities make loud noises very difficult for people. We have friends at Black Hills Works who wear hearing protection and who enjoy going into special quiet rooms in their residences.

The gentleman with the hearing protection appeared to be the most sensible of all of us at the bowling alley. I found myself a bit envious of his headphones. I have a couple of pairs of such headphones at the farm and wondered if I would have been able to get away with wearing them to the bowling alley. I wondered if bowling alley employees shared my envy. It seemed like a good idea.

Reflecting on the experience, I wondered if the reason that the music was so loud is that the employees are losing their ability to hear and they keep turning it up louder and louder like a grandpa in front of a television set.

Maybe that’s why I don’t watch much TV. I don’t want to be like the stereotypical grandpa who turns up the volume so much it bothers the neighbors.