And talk about the weather

So my father, who's been deaf more or less since some time
in the 70s when he was working in an industrial plant without
proper earplugs, finally decided to get himself a hearing aid
this week. Before this week, he refused to get a hearing aid for
a couple decasdes. His ex-wife forced him to get one from a
traveling salesman back in 1984. The guys sold him a piece
of shit and then, mysteriously never came back to find out
how things were going. This gave my father all the excuse
he needed to keep people shouting at him for the last 21 years.

"You need to get a hearing aid."
"I HAD a hearing aid and it was a piece of shit."
"That was over 20 years ago!"
"HUH?!"
"Forget it."
"HUH?!"
"FUCK OFF!"
"Oh, I'll have some."

You know how impossible it is to have any kind of relationship
with someone who can't hear you, more than likely doesn't want to
hear you and is a terrible guesser? I've had endless arguments with
my father because he just assumed I said something angry and hurtful
and responded in kind. He never answers the phone and
when he does, you better not be anywhere people can hear you.
I can't call him from the break room of my place of work because
everyone will look at ME like I'm nuts for shouting into the phone.

My father is deaf in exactly the range at which I speak. So I am
the one person in my family he finds hardest to hear. When I was a
kid, he used to accuse me of mumbling all the time. It really pissed
me off since I most certainly was not mumbling and no one else in
my life has ever accused me of that. If anything I over pronounce to
compensate. My father's disability was always everyone else's
problem. Everyone talks too fast, everyone talks too quiet and fully
99 percent of the people of Earth who don't have high-pitched voices
are mumbling.

The funny thing about my father's decision to get his hearing aid
finally is that my sister and I stopped brow-beating him about it
some time ago. We got plenty damn good and tired of never being
able to get ahold of him. If you wanted to see my father, you actually
had to drive 20 minutes north and hope he was at home. Because
my father hates the phone, he's always been partial to the drop-in
as well. I'm not. I don't often wear pants round the house. I'm casual
and if someone knocks on my door, it means I will have to get
dressed before I can answer it. Occasionally, I don't hear him
honking in my driveway. Consequently, my dad doesn't drop by
much either and I don't see him very often. He drops in on my
sister all the time because someone is always home and
wearing clothes. He'll drop in at 7:30 in the a.m. even so...
I'm pretty lucky in this.

I'll have to ask what made him change his mind when he
can actually hear me. But I wonder if it will really make a
difference this new found gift of hearing. I think he liked
being deaf. I think he liked to think people felt sorry for
him even though all that shouting just made everyone
pissed off.