I was something of a wall-flower girl by the time I entered middle school. I seldom joined in peer group discussions during class breaks, preferring the company of another girl who felt the same way.
My grades were not that good either. My teachers claimed I did not pay enough attention during class. Eventually, the school nurse spoke to my mother and off I went to the optometrist and audiologist.
The audiologist prescribed a pair of spectacles with thick, walnut-color frames. Plastic was all the rage in the seventies, although I felt they made me look like one of the teachers. And as if that were not bad enough, the audiologist decided I was moderately deaf in both ears, and needed hearing aids too.
I felt everybody was looking and laughing behind my back the first day I sat down in class wearing them. The spectacles meant I could at least follow what the teacher was writing on the board. My hearings aids were not that successful because they seemed to make everything louder.
I started spending more time in the school library where everything was quieter, and I could take my clunky hearing aids out so I could stop worrying about my spectacle frames catching on the plastic tubes going down my ears. I guess that’s where I discovered that books were my perfect companion.
Fast forward five years and I was sitting in class during my last month of school without the faintest idea what I was going to do next. Then the teacher asked what each of us was going to do when we left.
When it was my turn to answer I said ‘librarian’ because that was all I could think of at the time. The next thing I knew was they arranged an interview at the town library with the fearsome senior librarian who took no prisoners. Although I was to discover later, she was actually quite a nice person and she gave me a job starting in two months’ time.
I had plenty time imagining what working in a library was like. All I had to go on was what I knew from school. So I imagined myself in a vast hall full of books, where I would spend my time arranging them in the right order, and squaring them off on the shelves. But, oh boy, was my first day a lot different!
Elizabeth, the senior librarian put me on the front desk. There was no internet back then (hard to believe) so the town library was the first point of call for anybody wanting information. At least they re-routed the phone calls to someone else, so I didn’t need to know the local bee-catcher and fire brigade numbers on my first day.
My life settled into a pleasant routine after a while. I issued library cards to new customers, checked books out they borrowed, and checked them back in when they returned them. My spectacles and hearing aids were good enough for that, but I dreaded the phone calls because I struggled to hear conversations on bad lines.
Hearing ads became part of my life through the years. They really are a most wonderful invention, because they help you hear what other people are saying without having to watch their lips closely. I changed my hearing aids every five years when I had saved up enough, although they became increasingly expensive.
I even arranged a truce between my hearing aids and my spectacle frames by following a routine when I had to take them off and clean them. This became more of a challenge as the hearing aids became smaller, but the crunch time came when COVID arrived.
Establishing a truce between them, and the surgical face masks the library gave out, proved well-near impossible. That’s because the strings behind my ears kept snagging with the hearing aid tubes and spectacle frames, and this put me in embarrassing situations, especially when I had a queue of customers.
Eventually a customer suggested I try in-ear hearing aids instead. They fit inside the top of your ear canal and you don’t have those plastic tubes getting in the way. I spent my next couple lunch breaks shopping around, but expensive hearing aids on a librarian’s salary wasn’t ideal.
That was when I stumbled over Blue Angels Hearing on Google, and what a pleasant surprise that was! They are a direct-from-factory virtual shop, so their only expenses are delivery charges making their quality, rechargeable digital hearing aids affordable for real people.
My brand new, out the box rechargeable in-ear hearing aids shipped within twenty-four hours, after I made a single, once off payment of $597.99 including both aids and shipping. I am so pleased I discovered Blue Angels Hearing. My purchase made me look forward to going to work again, and hearing my customers clearly.