Ever since I was little, the doctors told my parents that someday I’d need hearing aids. I don’t know why this always freaked me out a bit: maybe because anything to do with my ears bothers me a lot.
My hearing was getting worse, but I hadn’t told anyone about it. The ocean sound that was always in my head had been getting louder. It was drowning out people’s voices, like I was underwater. I couldn’t hear teachers if I sat in the back of the class. But I knew if I told Mom or Dad about it, I’d end up with hearing aids—and I was hoping I could make it through the fifth grade without having that happen.
But then in my annual checkup in October I flunked the audiology test and the doctor was like, “Dude, it’s time.” And he sent me to a special ear doctor who took impressions of my ears.
Out of all my features, my ears are the ones I hate the most. They’re like tiny closed fists on the sides of my face. They’re too low on my head, too. They look like squashed pieces of pizza dough sticking out of the top of my neck or something. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. But I really hate them.
When the ear doctor first pulled the hearing aids out for me and Mom to look at, I groaned.
“I am not wearing that thing,” I announced, folding my arms in front of me.
“I know they probably look kind of big,” said the ear doctor, “but we had to attach them to the headband because we had no other way of making them so they’d stay in your ears.”
See, normal hearing aids usually have a part that wraps around the outer ear to hold the inner bud in place. But in my case, since I don’t have outer ears, they had to put the earbuds on this heavy-duty headband that was supposed to wrap around the back of my head.
“I can’t wear that, Mom,” I whined.
“You’ll hardly notice them,” said Mom, trying to be cheerful. “They look like headphones.”
“Headphones? Look at them, Mom!” I said angrily. “I’ll look like
Lobot!”
“Which one is Lobot?” said Mom calmly.
“Lobot?” The ear doctor smiled as he looked at the headphones and made some adjustments. “The Empire Strikes Back? The bald guy with the cool bionic radio-transmitter thing that wraps around the back of his skull?”
“I’m drawing a blank,” said Mom.
“You know Star Wars stuff?” I asked the ear doctor.
“Know Star Wars stuff?” he answered, slipping the thing over my head. “I practically invented Star Wars stuff!” He leaned back in his chair to see how the headband fit and then took it off again.
“Now, Auggie, I want to explain what all this is,” he said, pointing to the different parts of one of the hearing aids. “This curved piece of plastic over here connects to the tubing on the ear mold. That’s why we took those impressions back in December, so that this part that goes inside your ear fits nice and snug. This part here is called the tone hook, okay? And this thing is the special part we’ve attached to this cradle here.”
“The Lobot part,” I said miserably.
“Hey, Lobot is cool,” said the ear doctor. “It’s not like we’re saying you’re going to look like Jar Jar, you know? That would be bad.” He slid the earphones on my head again carefully. “There you go, August. So how’s that?”
“Totally uncomfortable!” I said.
“You’ll get used to them very quickly,” he said.
I looked in the mirror. My eyes started tearing up. All I saw were these tubes jutting out from either side of my head—like antennas.
“Do I really have to wear this, Mom?” I said, trying not to cry. “I hate them. They don’t make any difference!”
“Give it a second, buddy,” said the doctor. “I haven’t even turned them on yet. Wait until you hear the difference: you’ll want to wear them.”
“No I won’t!”
And then he turned them on.
