Huh? Pardon me? Excuse me? Whadja say?

What I'm Listening To: Hear Me Out by Frou Frou

I’d like to start out with a disclaimer. This blog entry is not a reflection on anyone, any organization or any group of individuals affected with hearing problems in any shape or form. I’m just relating my experiences with having a difficult time hearing. Thank you.

Okay, I think I’m going deaf. At first I wasn’t so sure. I mean, when you can hear your cell phone ring from two floors away, or that incessant dripping from the faucet drives you nuts, you obviously don’t believe you have a hearing problem. So I’m thinking WTF, my hearing’s fine.

If my hearing is all well and good, then my addiction to television closed captioning must be totally normal. We used to only have the CC on when it was a show featuring UK actors so we could actually understand what they were saying. I mean, we all speak the same language, right? Not. Brits, Scots, you name it – to me they talk all fast and sing-song-y and full of strange words like snog, boot or loo. Think you know the King’s English? Just watch an episode of BBC America’s “The In Betweeners” with the captioning turned off if you want to be really brave – it will make your head hurt trying to keep up.

But how can I explain why those lovely scrolling captions now accompany basically everything we watch? Well, actors mumble, for one. Or they talk too fast. My favorite, though, is when the captions don’t match what the actor says, which happens more often than you’d think. Or the captions can’t catch up to the actor’s lines, which also happens a lot, especially on Saturday Night Live, btw. Or someone in the living room is eating super crunchy loud pretzels…I won’t name any names….JIM!

However, there are downsides to CC. Watching the bottom of the screen for an entire program kinda strips away the point of actors and acting – they might as well be puppets for all it matters. But the little yellow sentences dancing merrily by now hold me hostage. It’s almost painful for me to go places where captions are a nuisance rather than a necessity – like movie theaters….sigh.

It’s not just the TV I can’t hear. I can’t seem to hear live people either. “Huh?” is my official 2010 catchphrase – I know, it’s a dud compared to “That’s hot!” or “Where’s the beef?” but it works for me. I tried counting how many times I said it this weekend – I got up to 23. No lie. Why is that? Does everyone just talk too fast, or too softly, or forget to enunciate?

I’m at a complete loss. I could pretend I don’t know where this malady came from. Of course I could never link my hearing deterioration on forgetting to put in ear plugs when moshing to Fugazi back in the day or turning my headphones up to 11 on a regular basis. It’s just old age, that’s all! So be kind and speak up, sonny!!