Huh?

Me: "I think I'll get some sun on the beach."

To which my wife replies, "Yeah, but you're my son-of-a-bitch."

We have exchanges like this every day and, though entertaining, it may signify that it's past time to do something about our hearing.  Like so many in denial baby boomers, we are predictably beginning to plow past the expiration date on much of our on board equipment.  Reading glasses, aching backs, sore knees and the usual litany of busted anatomy has smacked us upside our 50 plus heads and we don't like it even a little.

The hearing thing and the loss of almost instant recall of all things trivial bothers me the most.  If it weren't for Google and the Internet Movie Database I would be spending countless nights staring at the ceiling trying to put names to character actors--heck even stars--I've seen hundreds of times in familiar old movies.  Names and faces I used to instantly identify are now hopelessly misfiled in the clutter of my aging mind.  Wait a minute, maybe they're on the cerebral Rolodex?  Nope, not there.

Almost daily I'm reminded of numerous conversations between my mother and me regarding her near deafness in the final few years of her life.  "You don't have to shout," she'd insist as my brother and I would explain to her all the positive points of wearing a hearing aid.  "They're for old people," was the response.  She was 89 at the time and, yes, you did have to shout.

I was in my late twenties when I first began to notice a loss of hearing in the high range, yet it didn't concern me as I continued to wear headphones cranked up to mach 10 three or four hours every day as I shoveled the hits on the radio.  Over forty years of that kind of abuse your ears pretty much take early retirement.  On the plus side, I have become a very accomplished lip reader and closed captioning is a necessity for those of us who know for a fact that today's actors MUMBLE.

So, as far as Linda and I are concerned, it isn't yet time to shop for hearing aids.  Those things are for OLD people.  We'll continue to muddle along missing some important conversational fragments but taking comfort in the fact that perhaps we will also miss some hastily proffered critiques of each other that might better be left unsaid.

"Are you going to wear those crappy looking pants again you old fart?"

"Yeah, I like 'em too.  These khakis really are a work of art."

Now, if I could just remember who played Penny on Sky King...