When I came to my senses, I was an adult. I still had the original hearing aid but it really didn’t work very well anymore. So I “upgraded” to newer technology, and an aid in each year.

Mysteriously, for months afterward people kept telling me to speak up. Finally realized why. With the new aids, my own voice sounded ridiculously loud to me — I was dialing it back, accordingly.

Which is a long way around to saying that I bet your uncle had once, maybe for a long time, had normal hearing or close to it, and maybe lost it suddenly. Which would explain the shouting.

(Heh. Jolie asked me about my singing. reCaptcha says, “cannot hit.” It’s right about that, too.)

I love music but have never been able to sing. Well, except in the eyes (note: not ears) of my 4th-grade teacher, Mrs. Denneler, who gave me the “opportunity” to perform solo. (Downstream sometime, I’ll write about that experience. It was pretty funny.)

Why do you ask? Is there a connection between, um, tone-deafness and real deafness? (Guess it would stand to reason.)

My uncle was legally deaf (the term my grandmother always used if she mentioned the condition at all). He had some developmental/learning/behavior problems as well though I never fully understood them because my grandmother liked to pretend they didn’t exist.

I still remember the sound of his voice when he would shout my name. I wish he’d gotten the appropriate help. I’ll post about him one day.

Thank you for letting us know more about you.

When I was in second grade, my school had my hearing tested because I wasn’t picking up a lot of what my teacher said in class. The problem, of course, was simply that I was usually reading a book hidden in my lap instead of paying attention to the teacher!

(I’m pretty sure I’ve lost some hearing since then, though; it’s definitely less acute than that of my friends, whom I must ask to repeat themselves every time we talk.)