Say What?

I'm sorry, what did you say?

I didn't quite get that.

It's not that I'm an idiot who doesn't understand you, it's just that I think I'm going deaf.

I've always had bad hearing. Chalk it up to my hard-living, Rock & Roll lifestyle, but it's slowly gotten worse over the last five or six years. I find that I have trouble hearing people if there is a lot of ambient noise around or if I'm not focused on them while they are talking.

It could be from all the concerts I've attended over the years, where ear protection was frowned upon. In the 80's you wouldn't have been caught dead at the Def Leppard concert with earplugs in. The only buffer my ears got was from the long flowing locks of my amazing hair. (It wasn't the mullet, there was more hair on the sides.) The best part about concerts those days was that by the end of the show when the booze had worn off, your head was still ringing from the volume enough to cause a buzz of it's own. There were times when my hearing didn't fully return for at least at day or two later. (I'm looking at you, Motley Crue.)

Could my iPod be contributing to my hearing's demise? I don't really care - don't you dare say anything bad about the Pod. I wouldn't blame the iPod if my ears started bleeding mid-playlist.

Some may say that because I'm a man I have selective hearing anyway. That can't be more wrong. How do I know? Because sometimes the things I don't catch is the stuff that I know I want to hear. What's selective about that?

I know that I should just suck it up and go get my hearing tested. But what if I need some sort of hearing aid? Sure, acting like a Secret Service guy would be cool for the first few hours, but after that I would be self conscious about it.

I think I'll do the manly thing and just ignore it.
The only thing I'll have to do is change my catch phrase to "Pardon?"

Later.