Talking Hearing Loss

Let’s rewind a bit. I was first diagnosed with hearing loss when I was about 13. This was an age when my life was already awkward enough—throw in a hearing aid, and you’ve just handed the kids at school a goldmine of material for teasing. As a teenager, my sole mission in life was to blend in and avoid attention at all costs. So, naturally, the hearing aid stayed hidden in the bottom of my drawer, never to see the light of day.

Fast forward to age 19. I lost all the hearing in my left ear and was fitted with a fancy new CROS hearing aid that transferred sound from my left side over to my right ear. And here’s the kicker—it was integrated into a pair of glasses. Super discreet, right? I thought, “Okay, this I can live with.”

But this was the era before digital hearing aids and smartphones really worked together. So, the moment I tried to use my mobile phone while wearing my “hearing aid glasses”, my ears were greeted with a loud, obnoxious hum instead of the person on the other end. Not only that, but if I was near someone using their mobile, my hearing aid would pick up interference—a lovely dut-dut-dut-dut-dut sound that happened 2–3 seconds before their phone actually rang.

At the time, I worked in the Quality Assurance department of an Internet Service Provider. My job was to monitor the calls of support agents to ensure quality standards. We had this small, shared office, lovingly referred to as the “Fishtank.” One day, while going about my usual business, I heard the dut-dut-dut-dut-dut noise and, without thinking, turned to my coworker and said, “Your phone’s about to ring.”

Sure enough, within seconds, his phone rang.

His jaw dropped. “How did you know that?”

Now, keep in mind, I was still deep in denial about my hearing loss, so none of my coworkers knew I had a hearing aid. From his perspective, I had just predicted the future.

Naturally, I played it cool. I shrugged and said, “I just knew.”

And that was that. Or so I thought.

A few days later, it happened again—this time with another coworker. Dut-dut-dut-dut-dut. “Your phone is going to ring!” Boom. Instant phone call.

People started theorizing that I had some sort of sixth sense or was sensitive to electromagnetic waves. Again, I just shrugged and acted like it was no big deal, but inside I was thinking, “Alright, this is getting interesting.”

From that moment on, whenever I heard the dut-dut-dut-dut-dut sound, I’d dramatically touch a finger to my forehead, adopt a look of intense concentration, and announce in a deep, mysterious voice, “Someone… is about to receive… a phone call.”

I might’ve even thrown in some nonsense about “a disturbance in the space-time continuum” for extra flair.

This went on for months. My coworkers were thoroughly convinced I had some strange, mutant ability to predict phone calls. And did I ever tell them the truth? Nope. Not once. I let the legend of my phone-call-prediction powers live on.

Looking back, I probably took the joke way too far. But hey, sometimes you’ve just got to embrace the weird and roll with it. Plus, I mean… who wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a superhero, even if only for a little while?