I’ve just received a letter from Joel George. Mr. George you will recall is the genial gentleman who runs our public hospital. Been there a while too; which says something about his tenacity and fortitude. It must be frustrating managing an organisation where the funder underfunds you to ensure your frugality. But I digress. Attached to his letter was a survey form which he asks me to fill in as I was, according to his records, latterly a user of his facilities.
I struggled to recall when I had been a patient at his institution in recent times. Apart from visiting the odd indisposed friend I have had no cause to use the services he administers as far as I could remember. It wasn’t always that way. Before I was married I was a regular visitor to the hospital. My sojourns at that time however were centred around the Nurse’s Home and if a survey had been thrust at me back then I would have revealed that the matron was crabby and made strenuous efforts to hamper my progress into the building, but that the nurses were wonderful. They must have been; I married one of them.
But then the penny dropped. I had visited Choice Health in Chapel Street, which is of course an outpost of the Joel George empire and no doubt his questionnaire related to that attendance. The awful truth, which I shall now reveal publicly, is that I have aids. Those of you who would look forward to the inevitable demise of the column and the columnist will be disappointed to hear that the aids are of the hearing variety and sit snugly and almost anonymously into both my ears.
I came about these appendages virtually by accident. Walking past Snowsill’s friendly chemists some years ago I spotted a sign offering free hearing tests. I marched in and demanded an appointment forthwith. I told the lady, visiting from Auckland, who conducted the tests, that I needed a credible certificate showing conclusively that my hearing was perfect. I was even willing to pay for such documentation.
For years my family had been chiding me for having the TV turned up too loud, accusing me in the process of being deaf. My grown-up children reckoned that when they visited they could start to hear our TV three or four streets away. The little brats. During their upbringing I told them hundreds of millions of times not to exaggerate.
It reminded me of when I was a kid and our next door neighbour bought a new radiogram. For the uninitiated ‘radiograms’ were the forerunners of ‘hi-fi’s’ which were themselves the precursor’s of ‘stereos.’ The proud purchaser suggested over the fence to my parents that perhaps they would like to come over to his place and listen to his new radiogram. Dad’s callous response was that the neighbour could just as easily come over to our place and hear his new radiogram.
But again I digress.
The friendly lady at the chemist’s shop told me after conducting the tests that she had good news and bad news. The good news was that my family was very perceptive, the bad news was that my hearing was appalling. “What do you do for a living?” she wanted to know. At the time I was endeavouring to sell real estate. She looked puzzled. “Have you ever had any other vocation?” she enquired. Well, I admitted, I had spent 36 years as a butcher. “Did you perchance use a bandsaw?” was her next probe, and I allowed that I had used one for about four hours a day during the duration of my tenure in the meat trade.
The friendly lady at the chemist’s shop told me after conducting the tests that she had good news and bad news. The good news was that my family was very perceptive, the bad news was that my hearing was appalling. “What do you do for a living?” she wanted to know. At the time I was endeavouring to sell real estate. She looked puzzled. “Have you ever had any other vocation?” she enquired. Well, I admitted, I had spent 36 years as a butcher. “Did you perchance use a bandsaw?” was her next probe, and I allowed that I had used one for about four hours a day during the duration of my tenure in the meat trade.
Her examination was complete.
Using impressive alliteration she reckoned ‘butchering beef bones on a bandsaw’ was the worst thing you could do to ruin your hearing, though perhaps she really meant it was the best thing you could do to ruin your hearing, but whatever, “You’re lucky,” she gushed, “ACC will pay for your aids.”
I was glad I hadn’t told her that from about age 17 and into my early twenties I had played in a Rock’n’roll band. An unkind but not entirely uninformed music critic, writing in the Manawatu Evening Standard after a concert in Palmerston North wrote this about our performance: “What the band lacked in talent they made up for in volume.” The lead singer - and that was me- he went on to say: was “Unimpressive” and “over-amplified.”
ACC may not have been so generous had they known about the routine punishment I had given my teenage eardrums.
But the aids, state of the art seeing I didn’t have to pay for them, have put me in the class of the six million dollar man. Well, in his hearing section anyway. Eavesdropping is easy. I can now hear intimate conversations from across crowded rooms and people who want to keep confidential information from me ought to learn sign language or resort to written memos. Rather than hasten my departure from this earth they supply such clarity that I confidently expect to live to 120, an age I have worked out I will need to reach to get all my taxes back.
Meanwhile I will reply to Mr. George’s questionnaire in a positive manner. The treatment I received at the hearing clinic was exemplary and I will tick all of the boxes at the highest end of the scale. But he may not necessarily get the answers he wants from all he surveys. An acquaintance, presenting for surgery, got as far as the front door of the hospital when he saw a sign on the building saying: “Guard dogs operating.”
He hasn’t been seen since.
Using impressive alliteration she reckoned ‘butchering beef bones on a bandsaw’ was the worst thing you could do to ruin your hearing, though perhaps she really meant it was the best thing you could do to ruin your hearing, but whatever, “You’re lucky,” she gushed, “ACC will pay for your aids.”
I was glad I hadn’t told her that from about age 17 and into my early twenties I had played in a Rock’n’roll band. An unkind but not entirely uninformed music critic, writing in the Manawatu Evening Standard after a concert in Palmerston North wrote this about our performance: “What the band lacked in talent they made up for in volume.” The lead singer - and that was me- he went on to say: was “Unimpressive” and “over-amplified.”
ACC may not have been so generous had they known about the routine punishment I had given my teenage eardrums.
But the aids, state of the art seeing I didn’t have to pay for them, have put me in the class of the six million dollar man. Well, in his hearing section anyway. Eavesdropping is easy. I can now hear intimate conversations from across crowded rooms and people who want to keep confidential information from me ought to learn sign language or resort to written memos. Rather than hasten my departure from this earth they supply such clarity that I confidently expect to live to 120, an age I have worked out I will need to reach to get all my taxes back.
Meanwhile I will reply to Mr. George’s questionnaire in a positive manner. The treatment I received at the hearing clinic was exemplary and I will tick all of the boxes at the highest end of the scale. But he may not necessarily get the answers he wants from all he surveys. An acquaintance, presenting for surgery, got as far as the front door of the hospital when he saw a sign on the building saying: “Guard dogs operating.”
He hasn’t been seen since.
(First published on the 31st of January 2001)
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