Friday, June 14, 2013

Hearing Aids are Cool (Or: Aunt Hannah is a Hypocrite)

Let me be clear, even though I wrote a book for my Hard of Hearing Niece entitled Hearing Aids are Cool, I secretly wanted to high-five her when I found out that at the age of 3, she went outside to play and when she came back in they were gone...as far as I know, her parents never found them. I couldn't blame Evie for burying her hearing aids in the dirt. I spent a few awful years as a child fighting with my mother about wearing hearing aids. If I had been the free spirit that my niece is, I would have buried them half way to china and then danced on their grave with an evil cackle.
And while I'm told by audiologists that I've missed a LOT by not wearing them, and I could gain a lot by wearing them now, I would rather be blissfully ignorant about what's going on around me than to hear every squeaky shoe, and the clocks ticking and the water dripping and...yeah, I wore them for a couple of months recently and it was one of the more unpleasant experiences of my life. Nevertheless, I have many cousins who are fortunate enough to have their hearing impairment diagnosed at an early age so they can start wearing them as babies and have no idea what it's like to not know how to hear. It is for the cooperative hard of hearing children in this world that I post my book here. The original was a scrapbook that is in my niece's possession now, the pictures below are of colored photocopies of the original. I ripped pictures off of Google Images, and while I enjoy scrapbooking, I never claimed to be Martha Stewart, so please don't go all judgy-mcjudgy-pants on my scrapbooking skills :-) It's not copyrighted, so steal whatever you like if you feel it may help someone.


5 comments:

  1. This book and the sentiment behind it, are, in a word, beautiful.

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  2. Very Very cool Hannah! I cant wait to read it to my kiddos! Do you know what kind of hearing loss you and your niece have? I have the same hearing loss as Grandma Lucy, my mom, my son Landon and my Daughter Aubrey. It would be interesting to know how many people in our families have the same loss.

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  3. I probably have what you guys have...the audiologists have never explained it to me very well, but I do know that I have a 35-50% loss. Evie's Mom has a different kind of hearing loss that both Evie and her brother have inherited. Evie actually needs to use sign language to communicate. 3 different speech therapists have said her speech is as good as it's going to get, which isn't that good.

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  4. I remember when you first told me about this book. I thought then and still do now, that it is awesome. Love it! I think you would do well writing kids books.

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