Becoming disabled means dealing with change. Change is a part of life. Everyone knows that. Many comfort themselves with that reliable old saying when the storms of life unexpectedly blow a tree across their path. But most people never deal with immediate change, such as when my eye doctor told me I could no longer drive. That one little sentence uttered several years ago affects me every day. I have to navigate around that roadblock constantly.
Even something as simple as getting a new set of hearing aids can be a logistical nightmare. Yesterday, I had an appointment to pick up these new contraptions. My wife leaves the house a little before seven o’clock for work, but my appointment was for later in the day. I didn’t want to sit in her office for hours before she could take me; plus, she doesn’t like for me to leave the house with her when she’s going to work because she says I slow her down. She calls me King Piddle because I’m always going back into the house to get something, or check on something, after we’ve locked the door. Of course she doesn’t confess that King Piddle’s trips back into the house are often a good thing. Many times, I have turned the coffee pot off, or worse yet, the iron on the ironing board. Consistently and predictably, I always turn off lamps. My wife was born with a genetic defect that doesn’t allow her to cut a light switch off or turn a lamp off. She is just simply unable to do it. Once she’s on the path to the door, nothing else exists but getting out of that door. It’s as if she’s caught in a tractor beam on Star Trek. Scotty has pulled the lever and she’s being transported to the car. It never occurs to her that leaving these utilities on will cost us more money, but I do because I’m now on a fixed income. I’m not pulling in the extra dollars anymore. I fear the Starship Enterprise is going to run out of fuel. Plus, I fear the cats could theoretically knock a lamp over and start a fire. So King Piddle’s trips back into the house often avert tragedy. But no ever brags on a stop sign at an intersection, they do; however, lament woefully if it did not have a stop sign and someone speeds through it, causing a horrible crash. King Piddle is the Stop Sign that saves the day.
So yesterday’s trip to the hearing aid store had to be coordinated with my son’s departure time from the house. He leaves for work an hour and a half later, so I rode with him. He dropped me off at my wife’s office a full two hours before my appointment. My wife took me. She and I listened while me man told us several things, which we both forgot most of, about the new, hi-tech hearing aids that cost more than thirty-five hundred smackers. But in order for my wife to take me to the appointment, she had to make sure someone could cover her schedule at work. Fortunately, the cute little girl from India who works part-time for her was able to be there yesterday. Whew! Good Lord.
One simple trip is a logistical nightmare somewhat akin to planning the Normandy invasion.
After the battle, we finally got my hearing aids. The man who sold them to me warned that they might have to be adjusted. Sure enough, the longer I wore them last night, the more I realized I can’t hear any better out of these thirty-five hundred dollar contraptions then I could out of my old ones; therefore, I’m going to have to schedule more appointments for them to be adjusted. My wife has a business trip tomorrow, the next day her sister is having surgery, so I don’t have a clue how we are going to coordinate the next battle plan; there will be guerrilla attacks, booby traps, moral breakdown among the troops, etc.
War is hell.
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