By Rex Catubig

 

IT is said that the last to go as one approaches the final round, is the sense of hearing. While the body may have given up the fight, it is claimed that one could whisper into the ear of a dying man and he could hear it.

But contrary to that belief, it is also true that the sense of hearing actually declines early on because of age. One giveaway of growing old is becoming hard of hearing.

Along the way, conversations get peppered with interjections like: “Excuse me?” Or “I beg your pardon?” Or commonly, you overhear pleas for clarification like, “Ano kamo?” “Ansabi mo?”.

One has to make a habit of cocking one’s ear.

At the beginning of 2000, one of the most memorable advertising taglines that resonated across the cell phone signal, is the confirmatory question: “Can you hear me now?”

It echoes the problem with weak signals that make communication choppy and corrupted.

This problem with auditory reception affects perception and happens all too often among my age bracket where conversations get cluttered with crisscrossing thought balloons.

At one time, malapropisms popped like kettle popcorn after a burpy lunch concluded with sweets and the usual culinary culprits.

Carbs, cholesterol, and sugar –any one of which or a combination could have been the trigger. At a certain age, food is not so much nourishment as a time bomb. After the initial heavenly euphoria of satiation, (Ang sarap!), one breaks into a hellish ER episode of acid reflux, bloating and empacho, or nasty blood sugar spikes.

As a result, brain chemistry is altered which affects the capacity of the ear to process the sonic signals it receives. Else, how does one explain the mix-up between glutathione and malathion?

“Yong malathion, nakakapagpaputi ba talaga yon?” Naively asked one in the group.  Maybe, that is a valid question. For one thing sure, if you gulp it down–you’ll surely end up white and ashen as death.

Oftentimes, the unruly group conversations become all tangled and garbled up–like hand-held walkie-talkies on different channels plagued with staticky transmission. It’s hard to believe that this band of sounds-loving people who ruled the disco dance floors of the 70’s and 80’s and survived the onslaught of triple digit decibels, are now just a whisper away from hearing aids. Are they victims of the era’s ear-splitting rock soundtracks? Or just plain aging?

And yet, regardless of the unsynchronized mode of exchange, the semaphoric waving and shouting, we still perfectly understand one another and even afford to laugh merrily and self-deprecatingly at our gaffes and blunders.

Friendship certainly has a way of sorting out and making sense out of all the non-sequiturs, phonetic aberrations, and cross lines that litter our conversations. Because, in the end, we get to reach through one another and enjoy the zany nonsense. And we acknowledge not only our mutual medical challenges, but we accept the inevitable wages of age.

It’s the way friends are. They travel along uncharted sound waves and get to unravel and decipher tangled thoughts. Amid the noise of everyday life, we hear the whispered message of undying friendship, that even in the throes of death comes on loud and strong, amplified by the power and resonance of love.

“Paki ulit”. “Di ko gets”. “Mahina signal”.

Share your Comments or Reactions

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments