| 6/15/2006 Er, What Was That? I have a friend who claims to have great hearing. He spent extra time searching for headphones that could match his great hearing. "Most people can hear to 20,000 hertz. I can hear to 40,000 hertz." Now, the theoretical limit of human hearing runs from 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz. His claim that he can hear a sound at 40,000 hertz simply isn't possible. How do I know this? Because he's a human and not a dog. The ironic part of this is that in most of our conversations, I spent half of the time repeating what I had just said, because he apparently didn't hear me the first time around. I guess his hearing doesn't extend down into the levels that most people use to converse with each other. • My hearing is OK on one side and rather poor on the other. However, hearing tests show them to be about equal. I don't really believe it, because when I cover my left hear there is a definite dulling of the environment. Maybe I'm just as delusional about my friend when it comes to my hearing. • The loudest concert I ever attended was in the early 1980s. I went with my friends Scott and Barb, and we were late as usual. I want to say it was at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, but after 20 years, it's not just my hearing that has dulled a little bit. The memory isn't the steel trap that it once once. Anyway, the bands were Loverboy (!), and the opening act was Zebra (!!). Both were early glam-rock bands, although we didn't know it at the time. But there was a lot of big hair, Lycra and Spandex and sleeveless shirts on the stage that night. We really had gone to see Zebra, because they were somewhere between rock and semi-pop-alternative rock. I think we arrived in time to hear the last two songs. We were often late to where we were going. When we came out of the arena, our ears were ringing. Well, at least I know my ears were ringing. I think I lost a bunch of hearing that night. Scott could never claim to have great hearing, because he was always asking me to repeat what I said. In high school, we used to have a crude joke involving an apparent loss of hearing. • I have these Sennheiser ear buds for listening to music. I love how they sound, but they're too big for my ears. It actually hurts to have them in for more than two or three minutes. I've been using some Bang & Olufsen earphones for a while. Very nice, although you have to get used to that little bar that fits behind your ear. One downside: They sometimes pull out by the roots the hair near your ear. Ouch! I had these other earphones that had little foam cushions. I couldn't get them to fit my ear no matter what I did, so I eventually threw them into the trash. The best headphones that I've had are a pair of studio Sennheisers. Great sound. • When Barb was going to school at Pitt, she lived in one of the tiniest apartments that I'd ever seen. It could have been part of the "you had to go into the hallway to change your mind" jokes. It was that small. The funniest part was when Scott bought a small stereo for Barb, and it came with its own remote control. The apartment was so small you could almost touch opposing walls without moving, but Scott still used the remote to turn the volume up and down on the stereo, which probably was just 18 inches from the end of the remote. And of course, he controlled the remote – just how all guys like to control the remote. |