One thing I do every year during The Birthday Week is indulge in a massage. This year that didn’t happen – I missed that window for a number of reasons…. but eventually I decided to just get a very badly needed belated one. It wasn’t even celebratory at this point, it’s just that everything seems to hurt lately.

The massage therapist is about my daughter’s age. I’ve known her for a very long time, but I haven’t seen her recently. When I do, we tend to chat a bit here and there and catch up on things. When you don’t see someone for a while and then see them again, you tend to notice the changes. The conversation went as follows:

Me: “It’s nice to see you. You’re looking good!”

Her: “I have gray hairs”

Me: (observing her long, thick mane of golden brown hair without any gray) “You have gray hairs? I don’t see any gray hair!”

Her: “No, I said I have nightmares”

Me: (wondering what that has to do with looking good) “Oh no! What are you having nightmares about?”

Her: “No, I said, I avoid mirrors“

Me: “You avoid mirrors?”

Her: “Yes!”

At that, I just started laughing, and then replied, “Nice Socks,” thoroughly confusing things, before explaining to her what “Nice Socks” had to do with anything.

This has been the story of my life for many years now. This is what happens when you can’t hear well anymore. It’s especially worse if the person isn’t facing you, is eating or chewing gum, happens to be a mumbler, or one of those people who barely moves their mouth when they speak (I don’t know how someone can speak without moving their mouth much, but some do and it’s insanely maddening and weird). This is what happens when the frequency of someone’s voice is in the range I no longer have. It happens in a crowded room, or when there is other background noise. Or it can happen in a quiet room, looking up into the face of your massage therapist, when one would think that would be an ideal setting. Apparently not. “I have gray hairs”. “I have nightmares”. “I avoid mirrors”. In my head I arrange those words into some kind of deaf person’s trippy haiku, ending with “Nice Socks.”

The story of Nice Socks occurred a few decades ago, before I had hearing aids. It was in the early days of a friendship/relationship where I was just getting to really know the person. We had been talking for a long time and I had opened up and shared some deeply personal and difficult things that had taken place in my life. By comparison, the man I was telling this to appeared to be living a fortunate and rather privileged life, one that seemed the opposite of what I had been going through. He listened attentively, with a compassionate expression, without saying much. However, as we parted, he suddenly said, “Life Sucks”.

“Life Sucks”? Seriously? Is that how he chose to sum up our conversation? I stopped in my tracks, incredulous at what appeared to be such a flippant response to what I had just shared. At that, something just snapped and I went a bit verbally ballistic. I told him what an incredibly arrogant and superficial thing that was to say, but coming from his lucky life he must just be so removed to be able to write experiences like those off as “Life Sucks”, because what did he know about life sucking?

He looked taken aback. The more I lit into him, the more surprised became the look on his face. Finally, he grabbed both my shoulders, looked me in the face and then pointed down at my feet. “Those are NICE SOCKS” he said, indicating the rather cool looking pair of knit Peruvian socks I happened to be wearing that day. Nice Socks. Luckily, he took it well and it ended up being pretty funny.

Welcome to my life.

Following that incident, “Nice Socks” became both an inside joke and a code word. Over the years, if I was in a social situation where it appeared I was not hearing things correctly, merely saying “Nice Socks” was like a secret instruction, helpful in letting me know to recalibrate and try another word combination. Like many people who have been on a slow and steady decline of losing their hearing, I have become pretty adept at throwing together different combinations and possibilities within the context of a conversation. Anyone who has to do it knows what a thoroughly exhausting process this is to fill in the blanks. It’s like your whole interactive life is one big game of Wheel of Fortune that never ends, on and on until it makes your brain ache. Or fry.

The social mishaps do occasionally happen – fortunately, they have been mostly few, and usually rather amusing. Sometimes when I miss-hear certain words and then find out what they really are, they are so bizarre that it actually makes me laugh to myself. I’ve repeated some things to my audiologist during hearing tests that actually sound raunchy (“did they really say that?”) and have provided some serious laughs. These have officially become Nice Socks Situations. Really, you need a sense of humor to get through some of this stuff.

I have gray hairs.

I have nightmares.

I avoid mirrors.

Nice socks.

~*~