Say What?

Getting old is a great adventure. Our immune system has to adjust faster than mutating viruses just to stay alive. Aside from these new assaults, our senses are in need of remedial help.  They are all withering and past warranty. Taste and smell have been compromised by Covid. My vision is beyond correction and my ears are becoming a vestigial organ whose acuity has been chipped away by too much exposure to Big Bands, Tijuana Brass and oratorical blather.

I’ll have the chef’s salad but hold the feta.

Did you just say to fold your letter?

Lip-reading had me laughing before the punchline or agreeing to something I just disagreed with. I’m always afraid I will smile when a friend tells me their cat died. A century ago I'd be carrying an ear trumpet. Now, hearing aids could be lost in a chopped salad.

Choosing a restaurant has become a weighty decision. We have to arrive either before or after the crowd. Maybe one day I’ll find that place that no one goes to anymore because it’s too crowded. (Thank you, Yogi Berra). 11:30 assures us easy parking and a booth in the corner but half an hour later the decibels arrive. 2:15 guarantees a near empty room but the place closes at 2:00.

Everything on the menu tastes like noise. My hearing aids seem to amplify the ambient chatter but still muffle the voices at my table. And why, I ask you, is the next table always so boisterous?Maybe they are thinking the same of us.

A few months ago I met a friend for lunch. We found a quiet table outside the eatery only to have a family with three kids sit alongside. When we moved to the far end, a jackhammer started up at a construction site next door.

Restaurants are afraid of silence as if someone might mistake it for a Christian Science Reading Room or library. They like the buzz, the illusion of being busy. They want the place to rock even when it is empty. The music is so loud I can barely hear the waiter reciting the specials as if auditioning for a part in some B movie.

Don’t they know there are more and more of us who only want peace and quiet but are not quite ready for assisted living? It isn’t only the clamor that agitates our innards but some of us still remember conversation. How else can we hear about each other’s latest infirmity? 

We may be the last generation to listen to each other rather than text across the table and take a photo of our plate. We are, after all, the elders, the living sages who actually have a distant memory of civil discourse.