Monday, April 25, 2016

"WHERE'S THAT GINGKO BILOBA? I THINK I LEFT IT...... AT WHOLE FOODS!"


There was a great spoof-song circulating about five years 
ago--- to the tune of "Memories".  It was sung by a talented
soprano and was all about her worries about her possible
MEMORY LOSS.
---------------------
WHERE IS MY HEARING AID?
****************************
I got my hearing aids January of 2010...partly to satisfy a
good many jealous friends who had already laid out their 
$3500 bucks and couldn't stand my reluctance to admit I
couldn't hear.

They worked fine, I guess, for about five years and then it
was visit, visit, visit, for service and new plastic tubes
installed.

I reckon there have been fifteen or more visits and it was
once an eighteen mile round trip and a long walk, all the 
way down on Carlisle.

Almost got to where we'd just throw in our sleeping bags
and Coleman stove and make a two-day journey out of it,
figuratively speaking.

Ah, but in January of this year we discovered a "sister"
branch office of "my" hearing aid company---a mere two
miles from our domicile...with a CHICO'S on the corner
and a WHOLE FOODS around the corner....also with a
coffee urn always full of cold coffee...and a neat popcorn
machine...that didn't work.

We changed to this branch and our first and second visits
just happened to be during blizzards...and we joked about 
it with the nice receptionist...who reads books.

(I never visited CHICO'S as it is a women's store and I've
never had any inclination to change over, as the popular
custom seems to be for a bored decadent society.) But BE
likes to walk down there while I am getting my hearing aids
serviced.

Anyway, last Monday night both of my aids just quit (very
unusual) right during a favorite show. Tuesday my specialist
worked me in at 12:50 p.m. and fixed 'em both.

Tuesday night, during another show, the right one died
again. I said: "I've had it. Not going back for awhile. I'll just
get by on the left one for awhile."

So we went along for several days and BE started whispering
again and she got frustrated, blaming it on my aids situation,
and so on Friday last, after a visit with a friend, she just dropped
by the Aid Co. and caught the tech between clients...and he 
put a new tube on that sucker. TA-DUM!!

I was sitting at home reading and when she came in, she said in the
CUTEST, most-musical voice: "I got your hearing aid FIXED! On
a Friday at 4 p.m.! Can you believe it!?  And I even had time 
to pick up some groceries at Whole Foods!" 

You won't believe this but I could already feel that comforting 
feeling in my ear again...for you see my aids were fitted with
molds that fitted perfectly into my ears.

BE then said "I'll get it. It's in my purse in the little plastic case."

So after a while (purse-searching can be slow), she said: "Well,
it's NOT HERE!  I MUST HAVE LEFT IT....AT WHOLE FOODS!"

She emptied her purse.  She searched the car twice but nada. She
called WHOLE FOODS, and they were nice...but no luck. She
drove over there and walked the front, talked to cashiers, but...
nothing.

I strangely felt "naus-naus," really---it was the old "EMPTY-EAR
SYNDROME" and the reality that I would likely never see my
beloved PESKY hearing aid ever again...and I would have to run
the TV at 22 rather than 14, forevermore.

Or part with $3500-$6500.

Those awful words kept ringing in my ear, like in the song: "I
THINK I LEFT IT...AT WHOLE FOODS."

Here was this wonderful, helpful woman, one-in-a-million and
she felt bad. I felt for her. I could buy several pair of new aids 
@ $3500 a pair...but  never find a wife like her.

Whole Foods Customer Service called not too long later: "Your
hearing aid has been turned in. We'll hold it here."

She  thinks it fell out of her purse into the shopping cart, when
"rummaging for her credit card."

So all's well here for awhile until they quit again.

A bit of advice: "DON'T BUY YOURS, UNTIL YOU REALLY
NEED 'EM...YA HEAR!?"

MIL
4/25/16


"Memory", sung by Pam Peterson
**************

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