A shiny new phone system has been installed at work, rendering Moira’s Big Phone, with its beloved Amplify button, obsolete. I sadly unplugged it, remembering the pain which had gone into getting it in the first place. I winced at the memory of the unfortunate Occupational Therapy incident back in February, where I had been hoping to get a decent phone and some low-key advice on acoustics in learning spaces. Owing to a complicated series of mis-communications caused by an over-sensitive spam filter in the HR department, I ended up being interviewed by a doctor instead. The whole thing started badly when Doctor Gloucester opened his file and said,
“It says here that you’re Deaf…but you’re clearly not Deaf. Not with a capital ‘D’.”
“Oh god, no…I’ve got some mild Cookie Bite hearing loss.”
“Mmmmm…” hummed the doctor, “Cookie Bite? Never heard of that. I’ll just do a quick test of your hearing.”
He whispered a series of numbers over my shoulder, in an exquisitely sibilant hiss:
“Sssssssssixty sssssssixxxxxx”
“Ssssssssseventy eightttttttttt”
“Ffffffffffffffffifty ttttttttttwo”
To my surprise, I heard every single one clear as a bell, and this revelation made me wonder whether I should be asking people to whisper using lots of words with ‘s’ in, instead of asking them to speak up.
“Can’t find any signs of hearing impairment, so I don’t think you’d be covered by the Disability Act”, he concluded. “Had a lecturer chap in earlier and he couldn’t hear a thing even when I shouted right into to his ears with his hearing aids in!”
“That’s awful”, I mumbled, glad that the doctor had tried a whisper on me first before moving to the shouting. I began eyeing up the emergency exit and wished my occupational therapy request to HR had remained in their spam filter after all. Just as I thought my embarrassment threshold had plumbed a new depth, I realised it wasn’t over yet.
“Can I see your hearing aid for a moment?” said the doctor, suspiciously.
Oh no! Perhaps he thinks I’m suffering from the world’s first case of Munchausen Syndrome by Hearing Aid, I thought with horror. HR were going to have a field day when the report for this landed on their desk on Monday morning along with an invoice. I was about to be exposed as a malingerer. I abandoned the emergency exit idea and contemplated just jumping straight through the window instead.
Reluctantly, I handed the hearing aid over, but not before giving the business end a quick wipe on my t-shirt to preserve one last shred of dignity. How many artificial legs and glass eyes had been passed across the table for independent scrutiny over the years, I wondered.
Doctor Gloucester silently conducted his inspection while I averted my eyes and prayed for the ground to open up and swallow me. After an eternity, he handed the hearing aid back, along with his verdict.
“Hmmmmm…” he said gravely, “could do with one of these myself, but I think I’ll wait another few years. It’s a terrible thing, vanity…”
The Cookie Bite Chronicles 