I wrote earlier about an incident on vacation where Chet and I decided that a good rule of thumb is “If someone does something or says something that isn’t what you would expect or seems “weird” to you, then you should check it out and see if there’s been a miscommunication.”  That happened last night.  Our church had a bonfire and evening of fellowship planned last night.  A family from our church who are good friends of ours live near us and I was going to be driving right by their house on my way.  I called and left a message on their phone to see if they were planning to go, and if not I wanted to offer to take some of the kids if they wanted to go.  I hadn’t heard back by the time I had to leave home, so I decided to try to call them one more time from my car as I was heading out.  Still no answer, so I just figured it wasn’t going to happen and continued on my way.  When I arrived at the house where we were having the bonfire, I saw that I had missed a call from my friend.  I called back and was expecting to hear something like “Thanks for the offer, but we decided to stay home.” or “Thanks for the offer, but we didn’t get the message until it was too late,” or something along those lines.  Instead, it was a “weird” call.  I said “Hey, I saw I just missed a call from you.”  “Yep…(silence).”  “Well, I called earlier and left a message offering to pick up the kids if they wanted to go to the bonfire.”  “Ok….(silence).”  “Did you get the message?”  “Yes, they got it…(long silence)”  “Ummm, I tried to call again on my way, but no one answered.”  “(silence)….sound of chewing…..”  “Are you there?”  “Yes….(silence).”  “Ok, well, I’m in the driveway, so I need to get going.”  “Ok.”  “Bye.” “”Bye.”  I really thought that was odd.  My girlfriend likes to talk as much as I do and something definitely seemed “off.”  I went to the party and didn’t think too much more about it last night until after I got home.  Then I started worrying…did she think I was chastising her for not going to a fellowship activity?  Did she expect me to stop by and think that I just didn’t show up?  What is going on?  Why was she being so “weird” on the phone?   I woke up early this morning still puzzled and wanting to make sure that there wasn’t some kind of problem between us. It actually never occurred to me that this could be related to my hearing.  I was just thinking it was some kind of misunderstanding between friends.  I called her this morning, and it turns out I never talked to her at all!  I was talking to her daughter the whole time!  Apparently she identified herself at the beginning of the call, but I didn’t hear that and thought I was talking to the mom the whole time!  That explained everything!  I wouldn’t expect a child to say the same things a mom would and I would have said things differently myself if I had known.  My hearing loss makes it difficult for me to distinguish voices a lot of the time, so I didn’t realize.  I’m so glad I didn’t just leave things the way they were…I wouldn’t have been aware that this type of problem could occur without any clue on my part and I would have always wondered why my friend was acting so strangely over something that I was trying to do that was nice. 🙂  I think there are some times that we should just let things go and not make issues out of every little thing that happens in life, but there are also times we need to sort out things while they are little and avoid having them turn into something bigger.  There wasn’t a problem at all, they just didn’t get the message until it was too late.

Sometimes I am starting to feel like my life if settling back down to the new “normal” and that I have things worked out as well as I’m going to with my hearing, but then things like this still happen pretty often and other things related to being hard of hearing .  I guess that IS my new normal.  I’ve been dealing with communication issues for many years now, but they are different and more frequent  with the current hearing levels I have.  I can talk on the phone and it goes well most of the time.  Sometimes I still have difficulties hearing, even on the captioning phone.  The captions definitely help, but sometimes they say “too quiet to hear” or “unclear” and I still don’t know what’s being said.  I sort of dread making business calls now because it can go either way.  This morning I  made a call to our insurance company to get a quote on car insurance for a car our son is considering buying.  Even with all of my controls on the CapTel phone turned up (it has a much louder volume than a normal phone and some other adjustments) I still really had a hard time understanding her.  The captions even said “too quiet to understand.”  It had to be something with the connection.  I was on another call right before that and I could hear fine.  I guess ultimately, I’ll take care of the business that I can, have someone else call and take care of the things I can’t, and life will go on as usual.  The new normal.  I guess I need to remind myself that a few short months ago I couldn’t use a phone at all, so this is actually a huge improvement and I should be grateful!  I am grateful.