Whatgirl^®.net
The Website for Your Ears

***N.B: The Adventures of Whatgirl are mostly real. Names, dates, plaes, breeds, and other pesky details are sometimes changed to reveal the innocent, expose the guilty, and celebrate hyperbole. Onward.***

© Cindy Haggerty, Big Stock Photo.

Just about everyone who wears hearing aids has experienced the Jimi Hendrix Effect. And it has nothing to do with music, in stark contrast to Jimi's all-too-brief contributions to the world. Engage in a meaningful hug with someone and revel in the high-pitched, pulsating "EeeahhrjjjhoooEEEEEzhzhzhzhzhzEEEEE" in the hugged ear. Pull a hat down a little too low and get the same thrill in stereo. Do something really inspired like take your hearing aids out of your ears before turning them off, and be rewarded by an electronic riff playing right from the palms of your hands that would make Jimi proud.

Now try doing one or more of the above on a date, and you may see your social life evaporate. Such is my perennial concern, recently elevated because my online dating service friend Keith--if that is his real name--and I have gotten to the two-week mark of our virtual fact-finding missions, and Keith has broached the subject that I both welcome and dread: The first call.

"Soooooo," he wrote, with all of those o's illuminating his nervousness, "What do you think about talking on the phone?"

I waited a few hours before responding. I was apprehensive too. Keith doesn't know about my ears yet, and I'm not sure when or if to tell him before we meet. Hearing aids can be the world's greatest dude repellant--not always a bad thing, like having a family full of lawyers--juxtaposed against my ability to make homemade chocolate truffles, a skill that is often a dude magnet. It's a push.

Virtual dating wipes out the need for speechreading, and the problem of background noise, and all of the other annoying communications obstacles that I encounter whenever I talk with someone in person. But virtual dates don't hug back, and they don't kiss worth a damn, either. At some point, I would have to meet Keith with all five of my senses and see/hear/etc. how things go, or write him off having known him only one-dimensionally. Curiosity was a big incentive...I couldn't help but wonder if he really was all that he said he was--never married, doing social work that he absolutely loves, and into books and baseball and dogs and left-leaning political activism and chocolate--or if his life was as superficial as his online picture, which looks like it was pilfered from a photo frame at Target.

I finally wrote back, "Cool. But I don't give out my phone number, I only exchange it. So you send me yours and I'll send you mine." At least I'd have the digits to give to my online dating SOS network in case Keith turned out to be featured on the post office bulletin board instead of a retail shelf.

So we swapped cell phone numbers and arranged for that first call; he would ring at 8:00 the next evening. I rested my ears most of that day, put in fresh phone amplifier batteries, and cranked up the phone handset volume as high as it would go. Necessary coping strategies to be sure, though I felt a little like I was perpetuating the myth of having normal hearing. I rationalized by telling myself that Keith had probably been telling me a few stretched truths himself. What a marvelous foundation for dating.

And with that wonderfully positive, barely-cynical attitude, I waited for the phone to ring. And yes, I had put on makeup for the occasion; a phone date is still a date. Two minutes before 8:00, I dropped a dog treat by the phone table so that my hearing service dog, Kapi, would be ready to go to work when the phone rang. Kapi is Sanskrit for "monkey," and the name perfectly suits this five-year-old canine girl's uber-cool genetic makeup of shepherd, beagle, some kind of terrier, and either dynamite or gunpowder (I'm not sure which). She is usually terrific about bounding to the phone without having a treat waiting as bait, but I wanted to preempt any potential snafus for this all-important first call.

The phone rang at 8:03 according to the clock on the microwave, and Kapi, well-aware of the goodie with her name on it, zoomed over to the phone, barreled back to me and bonked my knee urgently with her very cold, very wet nose, and then raced back to the ringer. I gave her another treat and thanked her before picking up the receiver and switching on my hearing aid telecoil.

"EEEEReeeeoooazhzhjjjhooo," the electronic Jimi screeched--he had to have the first word. And I had to acknowledge his unavoidable presence by rolling the phone receiver around my ear until Jimi found that sweet spot where he and my hearing aid were at peace. I was grateful that he shut up before I said hello to Keith. Maintain the fiction.

After that, the conversation that Keith and I had was in comparison boring, predictable, and innocuous...almost anticlimactic (it's nice to finally sort of meet you, how was your day, yes, the traffic was awful coming home, etc., etc.), but Keith's voice was--as accurately as a clinically deaf person can assess, anyway--friendly and engaging and just interesting enough to nudge me to meet him in person and find out if his voice matched everything else. And Keith sounded a whole lot less irritating than the synthetic Jimi...no offense to the legend.

We met for coffee the next Saturday afternoon. I still hadn't told Keith about my hearing aids by the time I got to the cafe, having decided to take my chances that my bionic ears wouldn't matter to him. Keith didn't know about Kapi either, though the latter had made it clear with her almost parental eyes that she wanted to meet him and assess whether or not he was worthy of either of us. She knows what it means when I wear makeup for a telephone call. But I left her at home to watch cartoons for this first--and perhaps only--date, to avoid overwhelming a guy who had seemed decent so far.

The Target picture turned out to be pretty close to the real deal--a little less hair, and more of what was left was gray; his face had character and depth, which I liked--but Keith was otherwise as advertised. I wasn't, as Jimi announced with an almost maniacal glee as Keith and I spotted each other in the coffeehouse and hugged lightly. As my ear brushed against Keith's cheek, Jimi introduced himself with a scene-stealing, "RRRRRraaaaaaahzghgzghzeee," prompting me to pull back with an embarrassed shrug.

"It's just my hearing aids," I said, expecting Keith to run. "They have this feedback sometimes when they press up against anything."

Keith was silent. I was scoring major points, ten seconds into our date. That's a new record for me. I tried to fill the awkwardness. "I call it the Jimi Hendrix Effect," I said with a patently manufactured smile.

Still nothing. I decided to lay all of my cards on the table, since it looked like my hand was close to folding anyway. "I started to lose my hearing when I was a teenager, but I do pretty well with my hearing aids," I told him. "And I also want to tell you that I have a hearing service dog, but I left her at home for our date."

Ah, that triggered something. Keith's eyebrows rose all the way to his receding hairline. Good old Kapi was going to save the day, maybe. "You have a WHAT dog?" he asked.

"A hearing service dog," I repeated. "She is trained to alert me to the phone and the doorbell and other sounds. She let me know the phone was ringing when you called the other night."

"Ohhh," he said, giving me that vacant stare I've seen a million times, the one people use when their minds are processing the concept of a hearing dog. (She's not blind. What does she need a guide dog for?) "Does she screech too?" he finally asked.

That made me laugh, and Keith smiled too. "Only when she doesn't like the guy I'm with," I told him with a wink. "You'd better treat me right, or she'll know when I get home."

The wink did it. We sat down for coffee in a quiet area of the cafe and had a nice chat. I still don't know if his name really is Keith, but I'm working on it.

Rock on, J.

Read previous Adventures in the Archives.