I was nowhere near ready. But when Dad was ready to go to the Waffle House, not much got in his way. I think you could have put the set for American Ninja Warrior outside his patio door, and he’d plow through it with his walker in record time to get to the W.
So here came the dreaded words, “Are you about ready, tweetie?” (It was always tweetie for me.) I didn’t have a smidgeon of make-up on. If we got pulled over, and the officer asked to see my I.D., he would have never believed I was the one on the driver’s license.
If you’ve seen the movie, Mrs. Doubtfire, and the emergency for Robin Williams to get the disguise on in time – I was feeling it. So while I said in a loud voice, “Hold on! Let me get my keys.” In a real quiet one, I quoted the Doubtfire line in a whisper from the other room, “What I need is a face!”
And he heard me. Sort of. He said, “Tweetie, did you say you need to shave?”
That’s just one of many similar episodes that caused us to insist Daddy get hearing aids. He had actually resigned himself to them a few years before then, when he was still living independently. We talked him into the expensive ones – not the cheapies – and if you know him at all, that’s like talking Walker, Texas Ranger into a matching sweater and scarf.
So he did it. After much talking-into. Think about that. If you’re talking someone into a hearing aid before they can actually hear because they don’t have them yet – there’s no telling what he thought we promised. He might have thought they were thirty dollars and came with a lifetime supply of Mr. Goodbars (something he was more than willing to invest in).
But he got them. They lasted six days. My sister called to see how they were working out, but he couldn’t hear her. She said put your hearing aids in, and he said, “They’re not worth anything.” And then the following conversation ensued.
I think it happened this cohesively and this coherently because my sister is something loud on the phone, but if she’s reading this, also loved and pretty.
Anyway, she said, “What do you mean ‘they’re not worth anything’? After what you paid for them, they ought to wash the car!”
“Well, I put them in the microwave. I nuked them, and now they’re not worth anything.”
“But Dad, why would you do that?”
“Well, I didn’t mean to, of course. They were in the bowl with the jelly beans. And you know, it’s not too hard to miss them in there. They’re all kind of shaped the same.”
“But why? Why were they in the bowl with the jelly beans?”
“Because I couldn’t carry everything. I was coming in from church, so I had my Bible, I had the loaf of bread and the bowl of jelly beans, and my hearing aids.”
(Only truth be told, his exact terminology was “earbobs.” All my life he had called earrings earbobs which confused my friends to no end. And now apparently he had a pair of them. Nuked.)
“Well, Dad, you know a really good place to carry your hearing aids would be in your ears. But why did you take a bowl of jelly beans to church in the first place?”
“Well, you know, they make a good snack on the way and on the return trip.”
(Okay, I inherited a gene or two here. You can’t fault him for being nutrition-conscious.)
“And what about the loaf of bread?”
“Oh, that was for the peacocks.”
Of course. Are you beginning to pick up on the fact we’re on the fringe of logical thinking in our DNA? Dad had some peacocks show up on his land at some point. One of them, Tommy, immediately became his best friend and was spoiled to eat whatever Dad was eating (101 ways with jelly beans), but the others were wild and so he threw bread pieces to them in the woods in a drive-by going to church.
“Okay,” my sister said, “So you had too much to carry inside, and so to help with that, you put the hearing aids in the bowl of jelly beans. I get that. But tell me why you microwaved the bowl of jelly beans.”
“Oh that. They’re just better that way. Nine seconds is the magic number.”
He later explained all this to the audiologist to see if his insurance would somehow pay, and it’s almost unbelievable that the audiologist responded, “Well, I’ve heard worse.”
I wondered, if the audiologist heard worse, was that with or without her earbobs?
I remember when all ear ornaments were "ear bobs." And those hearing aids are easy to lose, or loeave on for your shower. Loved all the "logic" of this tale!!