The noisy silence

Over the last three years, I’ve come to treasure sounds. Most sounds. Not bagpipes. Don’t miss them, sorry. ;-) But I have tried to embrace all other sounds, even the badly distorted ones. No surprises there.

Since the silence following CI surgery? Sure. There are (temporarily) fewer sounds to treasure (told you about the cupboard slamming, right?). But I’ve started to discover some new sounds. That I can even reproduce. And I’m learning that the sounds I ‘treasure’ are, well, just Plain Annoying to my hearing family and friends. ;-)

Take these scenarios …

Friday afternoon. I made my cousin a coffee. I stirred the sugar through the coffee and happily chatted away to her, from my post at the kitchen bench. I stirred and stirred. And stirred. It wasn’t until I happened to look over at her that I saw she had her hands over her ears and was laughing at me. (‘That is really loud!!’) I looked down at what I was doing, confused, then realised what had happened – I had subconsciously heard the sound of the spoon clanging against the side of the mug. And I liked it! In fact, I was deliberately making it as loud as possible so I could hear it! (Stir much harder and I probably would’ve cracked the mug altogether. If you’ve read my other post about the slamming of cupboards against coffee mug handles, you’ve probably come to the conclusion that I have a personal vendetta against our coffee mugs.)

Saturday morning. While chatting away to Jase in the car, I saw him cringe and make the ‘shh’ sound with his lips. Oops. I must have been yelling. So that’s why I could faintly hear my voice! Oh dear. I’ve literally become one of those people who talk and talk just to ‘hear the sound of their own voice’. I’d realised mid-conversation that I could hear myself, and so I’d started speaking louder and louder! ‘Sorry – just trying to make sure you could hear me over the engine!’ (* embarrassed chuckle *) The Look he gave me suggested I should kindly remember it is a car engine ... not a jumbo jet’s. ;-)

Saturday night. Jase knocked the pepper grinder over at the dinner. I heard the thud! So after he picked it up, I knocked it over again. And again. And again. This naturally evoked the infamous One Eyebrow Raise from Jase, which made me laugh. And, given the amount of pepper all over the table, that made him sneeze.

And I heard him sneeze!

Well there you go. I thought I’d lost that sound, but it appears some more of my residual hearing in the right ear has returned. (This could be explained by the sleep improvements over the last few nights. So my hearing still fluctuates … even now … how fascinating!)

Now, I can’t reproduce the sound of Jason sneezing … not without chasing him around the house with the pepper grinder. But I can at least welcome it! So I’ve created a fun little game where I start rating his sneezes out of ten, based on how clearly I’ve heard them. (They must be so loud! They need to be topping 90 decibels to have any chance of making it to my ear!) When I hear Jase sneeze now, I nod over at him, straight-faced, and give him a rating out of ten. The closer to ten the number is, the louder the sneeze must have been. This gesture is Not Appreciated, if I’m to judge by the (feigned!) frown that follows. But you know what? It distracts him enough to prevent the next five or six sneezes in a row from happening. So while it continues to help him, in an annoying sort of way, we’re going to keep playing this game. ;-)

As you can imagine, it’s a noisy sort of silence at home at the moment. Cupboards slamming, cutlery clanging, chairs scraping on tiles, things being dropped falling on the floor … even some obnoxious shower singing.

But with a week and a half to go until switch-on, I am going to have to learn to Contain Myself … or risk deafening my hearing family and friends in the waiting process. Not to mention destroying my personal inventory.  ;-)

Hmm … have spied an oven tray resting in the sink. I’m off to see what fun I can have with that … no self-control, I tell you. Clang! ;-)