A Fair Hearing

My attorney suggested that I review my will every five years. I agreed with his assessment and added, “It’s probably a good idea to do that while I can still hear what my family is saying about me.”

Snakes hear with their jawbones, fish respond to pressure changes, and male mosquitoes use antennae. Human ears never stop hearing. Even when you sleep, your brain just ignores incoming sounds.

I’ve always considered myself a good listener, but in order to listen carefully, one has to catch all of the words being spoken. My hearing loss was gradual, and, not being in denial, I realized that word clarity was becoming increasingly more difficult. I kept asking people to repeat themselves. I kept missing dialogue in movies and stage productions, and I often strained to hear what was being said in class.

So, wanting to get back into the conversation, I went to an audiologist who confirmed my suspicions that my ears were not filled with wax, but that I had a hearing loss that could be helped. 

Consequently, my days of saying, “What?” or “Talk louder!” are now over, because I have invested in an amazing technology called, “top of the line, digital computerized, miniature hearing aids.” These little miracles have once more opened up the total world of sound that I was missing.

Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan---He said, “Since I came to the White House, I got two hearing aids a prostate operation, and I was shot. The damn thing is I’ve never felt better.” While I don’t expect to have prostate surgery, and hope that the only shot I experience will be a shot of Scotch, I too, with hearing aids, “have never felt better!” Clarity of words is back and the stress is gone. I have always been a bit offbeat, but I no longer have to worry that people will think I am a total dimwit.

A 12-year study conducted by the Neurology Department at John Hopkins School of Medicine found that untreated hearing loss increased the risk of dementia. It is suspected that, “becoming more socially isolated is a risk factor for dementia and other cognitive disorders.”

An actor on stage has to hear his cue. It would ruin the play if she said, “The hills are alive with WHAT?” I am an avid fan of British television shows on PBS, but in the past I had difficulty catching much of the dialogue. So, to check out my hearing aids, I surfed the channels until I found a British comedian. The good news is that I understood everything he said. The bad news is that he wasn’t very funny.

Yesterday, I dropped a pin on the floor. I could hear it drop. However, I am still looking for it. Guess my next trip will be to visit my ophthalmologist.

Esther Blumenfeld (Now I know that “Thursday” doesn’t mean, “Let’s go get a drink.”)

Now You See Them---Now You Don't

When I was hiking in the mountains, I saw a man staring at a tree branch. “What do you see?” I asked. Excitedly, he pointed and said, “That’s the cocoon of a very rare (I don’t speak Latin). I looked where he was pointing and saw nothing, but not wanting to disappoint him, I said, “Wow! That’s really something,” and walked on.

Had I been on the mountain with Moses, I would not have said, “Moses, the sun is in your eyes.” If he saw a burning bush, who am I to deny his vision? After all, he did hike back down with a very good set of rules.

Someone once accused me of seeing people not as they are, but as I want them to be. Recently, I received an invitation to my 60^th high school class reunion. The invitation intimated that if you are still alive you are encouraged to attend. The big incentive in the invitation was, “A prize will be given for the best decorated walker, cane or wheel chair.” I declined with a note saying, “You are all frozen in my memory as 18-year-old kids. Not a bad place to be!”

Notwithstanding, I have come to the conclusion that I see people the way they really are---not the way they pretend to be.

For instance, the toilet in my guest bathroom wouldn’t flush, so a man who pretended to be a plumber came to fix it. It took him no time at all to break the mechanism he had come to repair, and it took me no time at all to conclude that this man obviously placed dead last on his plumbing exams and probably never received his golden plunger at graduation.

The next two plumbers informed me that my first plumber “didn’t make it,” an obvious euphemism for “he was fired.” They then explained, in plumber talk, (along with a moving demonstration) the mistakes that my pretend plumber had made. Flushed with success, they left.

That evening my toilet performed a marvelous imitation of an airplane propeller. Now my guests can be seated and come in for a landing.

It just proves that you don’t have to wait for Christmas for the fruitcakes to arrive. It would not surprise me at all if these pretend plumbers matriculate later in life finding stimulating work on our missile defense system, because life is like that.

Esther Blumenfeld (Yes, I definitely see people the way they really are.)

CROSSING WITH THE BLUE LIGHT, Blumenfeld c. 2006

Urban Grotto

Moving into a neighborhood usually involves reaching out to new people, so I invited a couple of neighbors over for an afternoon respite of coffee and sweets. I had learned that they were both artists, and thought the conversation might be interesting. He was very tall and lean, and she was as big as a minute. After a pleasant visit, as they were leaving, the wife said, “ We so enjoyed meeting you. Unfortunately, we can’t reciprocate, because there is no place in our home for you to sit.”

Twenty years later, I recently ran into this tiny energizer bunny in the grocery store. Her husband had died, and she invited me to visit her. I didn’t ask if she had purchased a chair, but being naturally curious, I accepted her invitation.

As I arrived, I noticed that both of the heavy gates were unlocked, and she greeted me at the door saying, “Welcome. Would you like a tour of the gallery?” As I entered the house I felt as if I had fallen into the rabbit hole along with Alice. Without warning, I had walked into an ancient dusty world where hundreds of masks stared at me from the walls. My hostess explained that she and her husband were lifetime collectors of pre-Columbian art. Huge urns blocked my path, ceremonial headpieces hung from the ceiling, and pre-Columbian ear spools reminded me not to stick Q-tips into my ears. This was the chair-less living room.

On our way to the dining room, I squeezed around a wooden canoe that was actually a very old drum. I noticed a long wooden beast blocking the fireplace. I thought, “Good thing about collecting antiquities is that you don’t have to deal with the artist.” Scattered about the dining room were animal forms and human forms and human-animal forms and pagan deities stored in glass cases.

We then entered the bedroom where her husband had died. His bed was surrounded with gruesome masks staring down at the bed. “I think maybe they scared him right before he died,” she said.  They scared me, and I wasn’t even sick. Her bedroom was a repository for her paintings and many, many clay pots representing several of her pottery periods. I learned about wheels and hand thrown and kilned and un-kilned until I glazed over more than any pot in that room.

The kitchen was blocked off so her howling dog couldn’t get out. She explained that he was “stone deaf”, so he howled, but she suggested we could sit in the kitchen. I told her I was expecting a telephone call and would have to leave soon. Actually, the kitchen looked pretty much like a kitchen fit for a howling dog.

“You can’t leave,” she cried. “You haven’t seen the studio that we added to the house.” At that, she threw open a door and led me into a cavernous grotto that would have comfortably parked three or four huge moving vans. This was the place where she and her husband created their art. Hundreds of huge paintings were stacked everywhere. Plexiglas cabinets protected his gigantic contemporary sculptures that resembled enormous entwined licorice sticks. The bathrooms had been turned into storage units and her pottery seemed to have multiplied faster than rabbits. But, the tour was not over yet-----

The next room was a repository for the most dramatic of the pre-Columbian collection. Standing on a long table was a collection of huge 10-foot warriors. My tour guide told me that before her husband died, they had stood as sentinels in their living room. There was also a head of a man with a facial deformity. I guess that’s what you call the loss of a nose.  The tour ended with a walk through a backyard of dirt (“because it’s natural”) and broken pottery (“because I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out ”).

Art buyers are now purchasing works from this home museum. My mother-in-law said, “Live long enough and you will see everything.” Now I know what she meant.

Esther Blumenfeld (Is art supposed to give you nightmares?)

Whose Joint Is This Anyway?

There was a very large prison on the outskirts of my hometown, and my father felt it humane to occasionally visit with the three incarcerated Jewish inmates. Usually, he would drag a few reluctant men from his congregation along with him, but it was difficult to find volunteers, as most people want to stay out of prison rather than to go in.

Two of the inmates were brothers, who, when they were nineteen and twenty years old, decided to hold up a bank in a small town situated on the commuter railway line. Since they didn’t have a car, they got off the train, held up the bank, and caught the next train back. The police at the other end picked them up. Proving that no matter what their mothers think---all Jewish children are not gifted. The other inmate, “Boom Boom” Julius was a reputed bagman for the mob.

Before we became engaged, W.S. thought it would be a nice gesture to ask my father for my hand in marriage. When he rang the bell, Dad answered the door, grabbed W.S. by the arm, yanked him inside, and shouted, ”Congratulations, Son! Do you want to go to prison?” That took some explaining, but W.S. did agree to accompany his future father-in-law. It was, as the boys inside would say, “an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

The three prisoners congratulated W.S. on our engagement and asked if they could come to the wedding. Dad, said, “If you can get out, you can come.” I was later told that an announcement of our forthcoming nuptials made it into the prison newspaper.

When Boom Boom discovered that he and W.S. came from the same hometown, he asked, “Do you know Morty Ross?” W.S. came from a very small town in Indiana. Everyone knew everyone else, Morty Ross had gone to school with his uncle, but how should W.S. answer this question?

This posed a dilemma. If W.S. answered, “Yes,” would Boom Boom kiss him on both cheeks or on the lips? Boom Boom was a scary guy. The tip of his nose touched his cheek. Someone must have put it there. And how did Boom Boom get his nickname? Did he play the drums as a child---or---was it something much worse? W.S. did not want to find out, so he said, “No, never heard of Morty Ross.”

Losing interest, Boom Boom shrugged, smiled and said, “Well, maybe the son-of-a bitch is dead,” as he walked away. I don’t know if the bank-robbing brothers ever got out of prison, but I heard years later that Boom Boom had been released and returned to his hometown. I never did find out what he did in his retirement.

Esther Blumenfeld (You think you have connections?  I have connections!)

CROSSING WITH THE BLUE LIGHT, Blumenfeld c 2006

What The Wind Blew In

Extreme windstorms in the desert blanket everything with dust. A brown haze hides the mountains, and people are urged to avoid driving if possible. I had a hard won appointment at the Apple Store with one of the computer experts at the “Genius Bar.”

Clutching my MacBook Pro, I blew into the store, brushed myself off, and sat at the “Genius Bar.” At the appointed hour, a red-haired, freckle-faced, 12-year-old kid (at least he looked that old) came through the inner door, where they hide their geniuses, and spoke my name. I described the problem and he said, “It’s time to toss your cookies.” That is when I first suspected that either the dust had blown into his brain, or that he graduated last in the genius class.

Before I could stick my finger down my throat, he explained that “cookies” are computer storage units, and that if I disposed of all 900 of them, it would help my problem. “Okay,” I said, “But can you promise me that I won’t lose the password on my website?” His freckles danced when he smiled and assured me, “That won’t happen.”

With a tap of his finger, my “cookies” flew into cyberspace---along with my password. “That’s it,” he said. But before he could leave, I grabbed him by the throat and he agreed to help me restore my password. I said, “You’re not going anywhere until I check all of the rest of them.” His red hair started to turn white. No more problems, and the not so cheery genius was happy to see me leave the store.

After this harrowing experience, I decided to reward myself for lunch at a nearby restaurant. Two waiters held the door open against the wind. I was ushered to a booth, and my waiter, “Cole,” took my order and said he would bring me a glass of water. As I waited for the water, I played a mind game to remember his name. I thought, “Nat King Cole, and who in the heck was “Cole Train?” Still no water on my table.

Covered with dust, had I turned invisible? I saw Cole, that merry old soul, running around far away on the other side of the restaurant. All my arm waving didn’t matter. Obviously, he couldn’t see me. I now knew that I was invisible.

A waitress named “Felicia”---or was it “Flicker?” At this point I didn’t care, put a glass of water on the next table, but I think no one was sitting there---unless he was invisible too---so I took the water and drank it. I asked the next person who walked past my table, “Can you please bring me my lunch?” She said, “I’m a customer, but I will try to get your waiter.” Obviously, the wind had died down, because the nice lady could see me. Eventually, Flicker put someone’s lunch on my table and filled my glass of water, but she didn’t say anything, so I suspect the dust had settled around me one more time. It wasn’t my lunch, but I ate it.

As you might suspect, I am still sitting in my booth, at the restaurant, waiting for my cup of coffee. No one can see me. 

Do you suppose I can disappear before paying the check?

Esther Blumenfeld (“The Shadow Knows!”)