A few years back while completing a comprehensive physical at Medcan, I was very surprised to learn something about myself.
I'm unable to hear certain frequencies.
When the audiologist was looking at the results of my hearing test, he asked, "Do you work in construction, with heavy machinery, or at an airport, like, as an air traffic controller?"
"Um, no... why?"
"Hmmm. Did you attend a lot of rock concerts when you were younger?"
"No, I wasn't nearly that cool. Why are you asking? What are you seeing on those charts?"
"You have a hearing loss that we typically see in people who are exposed to very loud noises for prolonged periods of time."
I laughed, and asked, "Would a baby shrieking in your ear every day for months and months cause this type of damage? Because I have four kids, and they all have very healthy lungs..."
The audiologist smiled and said, "That could be it."
So that was when I learned I can't hear certain audio frequencies. Overall, my hearing is fine. But when sounds fall within a certain range, my ear simply can't pick them up, which means if you're saying something to me, and your tone happens to drop to somewhere in that range, I'll actually miss part of the sentence. Weird, right?
This affects me in two areas of my life.
First, it affects me sometimes when I'm watching movies and TV shows at home, and I often need to turn the subtitles on in order to hear all of the dialogue. That's not great for me because it can really detract from the overall viewing experience... but it's not with all content or with all sound set-ups, so I've learned to deal with it.
And second, when people say certain phrases, they apparently drop into my frequency dead-zone.
"It's good enough."
"That's impossible."
"It can't be done."
"You should give up."
I never seem to be able to hear any of those phrases.
That's okay, though...
Some things aren't worth listening to anyway.
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