Ear and Now

I took a deep breath and focused on the words tattooed across the trainer's chest: "Death before Dishonor."

This was Saturday afternoon and I was standing in the football field at Fort Hamilton High School beneath a merciless sun trying desperately to avoid both as I did mitt work for the first time in months.

I did manage to duck the Grim Reaper, at least for the moment, so I guess one out of two ain't bad.

Exercise in the age of Covid-19 is a dicey proposition, given the potential for transmission.

But after months of shadowboxing alone in my living room, I wanted to hit something solid, and, well, it's been a long time.

After a few rounds of this torture I came close to hitting solid ground--face first.

"C'mon," my trainer said, "we gotta show these young whippersnappers a thing or two!"

Great idea, but at that moment the only thing I could show them was that getting older seriously sucks.

I just turned 63 years old, but this was the week that Father Time really wanted to rumble. I couldn't believe how anemic my punches were, how lousy my form was, and how the heavy big seemed to snort in disgust as I unloaded my pathetic combinations.

Okay, I can accept that I've gotten rusty since March and that it will take time to get back into shape. God knows I've been able to turn setbacks into comebacks in the past. And training outside in 80 degree weather probably wasn't best time or place to make my return.

But this was also the week my hearing aids finally arrived, another reminder that Old Man Time is still swinging away.

'I'll Box Your Ears!'

I would've been wearing them a lot sooner, having been diagnosed with hearing loss back in September, but the coronavirus put everything into a deep freeze.

And, to be quite honest, I was kind of hoping the hearing aids would never get here, even though I know that failure to use these things could tax my already overheated brain cells and lead to potential cognitive problems down the road.

Like pretty much every other in encounter in this time of the plague, my ear-ientation meeting (sorry, I couldn't resist that one) with the audiologist was conducted via online video and it got kind of weird as she guided me through loading up the batteries and putting the things in my head. ("Red is for right ear...")

The video portion came in fine, but the audio went adios for reasons I still don't understand, so the sound lady and I wound up looking at each other on the screen while talking over the phone. But I finally loaded up the batteries, looped them around earlobes and plugged them in.

Did the world change dramatically? Well, yes, it did.

Everything seemed to crackle: walking across the wooden floor of my apartment, opening a package, running water--every sound made me think of a fresh celery stalk being snapped in two.

The sounds felt artificial, like a dubbed foreign film. But perhaps that's only because I'm missing so much due to the hearing loss.

These things are small--not the disappear-into-the ear-model that I would have preferred, but small enough that the few people who have seen me have said they can't tell I'm wearing them.

Of course, they may be just trying to me make feel better. And the truth is that I have to wear these things, vanity and ego notwithstanding.

I haven't decided if I'll do another boxing session. I know the workouts will get easier, but I am concerned about the lack of social distancing. It's kind of hard to hit boxing mitts from six feet away.

But I feel like Father Time has got a real chip on his shoulder and I'm just itching to knock it off.

And if he does any trash talking, I'll just unplug my hearing aids.