The Talk, Part III

I should know better. I have lived on this wonderful Earth for 24 years—I really, really should know better. Alas, I need to write The Talk, Part III!

Why am I so melodramatic about this? My first The Talk article evolved from a 2013 high school assignment where the class was tasked to write a short memoir in 2nd person. I hate writing in 2nd person, but it does get across a sense of shared drama and angst with the readers. I chose to write about one of the defining moments of my life—the lecture and heavy disappointment from my parents after my dog chewed my hearing aids when I was eight.

Fast forward five years, three hearings aids upgrades, and a new dog later, I wrote The Talk, Part II based on leaving the hearing aids in a dog accessible zone. The new dog, Orion, discovered he had a taste for earwax too!

I should have learned my lesson then. Keep the hearing aids out of any and all dog zones at all possible costs. And yet…one hearing aid upgrade later with the same dog, I need to write The Talk, Part III!

To be fair, I may have been lulled into complacency while at grad school, living away from home. When I am home, I let the dog sleep with me because I’m a pushover for his puppy brown eyes. I always put my hearing aids on the way too dog-accessible bed side table—which coincidentally happens to be the same place I left my hearing aids in The Talk, Part II—I really have learned nothing since then!

The Talk, Part III

Thanksgiving came faster than you could blink. One moment you were reading the umpteenth research paper in your tiny student apartment and the next you were reading the umpteenth plus one research paper at home.

Reading the research papers was vital to complete the big research proposal due at the end of the year, but Thanksgiving is a much closer looming deadline to worry about. Mom has every meal planned Monday to Friday for Thanksgiving week with no deviations allowed. Holiday food holds a special sacredness, especially to the dog!

When you woke up this morning, you blinked away visions of citations and diagrams as Mom dragged you out the door to get the produce and fish for tomorrow’s big dinner. You had just enough time to grab the keys, the wallet, the mask, and to look vaguely human for your small-town grocery. You can’t help but feel that you’ve forgotten something though…

This is the same grocery run that you have done a million times before, but everything feels muted. While you ordered the big salmon for Thanksgiving, you realize you never grabbed the hearing aids from your bedside table. Oops!

You’re sure the hearing aids are safe on bedside table. Nothing will happen. The dog is locked in your room, but he has toys, food, and water. Everything will be just fine.

You and Mom return the car laden with enough grocery to last this week and the next. You unload the groceries—the salmon, the spinach, the feta, the beans, the bread. You release the dog once the front door is closed. He joyously greets you before he runs to greet Mom.

Just as you were about to finish putting away the groceries, something glimmers on your bedroom floor. Did you drop something last night? A pin? A needle? A thingamabob? 

No. Something much worse.

The hearing aids!

One hearing aid remains safe on the bedside table, but the other is on the floor in two separate pieces—the hearing case itself and the tubing.

The good news? The hearing aid case, the big money, high technology bit, is intact and unharmed. 

The bad news? The tubing is completely mangled with bite marks and the ear-mold has vanished without a trace. While not as devastating as the any damage to the hearing aid case itself, replacing the tubing and ear-mold requires a trip to the audiologist.

The dog comes back to see what was taking you so long. As you look into his soulful brown eyes, you know with absolute certainty that there was no one to blame but yourself.

Never, ever, ever leave the hearing aids where the dog can get them. There should be no reason for The Talk, Part IV!

Look at this face! Does this look like the face of a little dog that would ever get in trouble in his life? That knocks over trash cans? That eats hearing aids and ear wax? No way this little dog with that face could do it!