LIFE SKILLS IV – BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

Could you live without sound, class?

When i was younger, I had a friend called Sam. She was a very close friend of mine but she had issues with her health. She had been born almost deaf. I used to struggled to understand it as a child. I couldn’t comprehend how it was possible for someone to go through life without a full hearing ability. On the occasion that I asked her about it all, she was friendly enough. She used to joke around that she could hear the same as everyone else, just as though her head was wrapped in a couple of towels.

Then, when she was a teenager, the doctors told her she was mature enough that now an operation was a valid option for her. She barely even hesitated before she had signed her name against this operation. She was so excited, she could barely contain it as she wondered what all of her favourite people and media would sound like without the constant muffle her ears subjected them to. She signed the documents and waited until a spot opened up with the specialist doctor.

A month later, she got the letter. The date had been set. She had been summoned to the Hospital the following Wednesday in order to undergo the procedure. In the letter, they warned of the possible side effects, that it may not work. The also set the guidelines for preparation. They recommended building up the noise levels ahead of the operation, to try and encourage the ears to focus when the time came.

So the following Wednesday came around, and Sam went to the hospital and underwent the procedure, under a general anesthetic. I was still good enough friends with her that she had asked me to the hospital with her, so I waited in her room as the doctor carried out the procedure. When she came back to the room, she was still asleep, still under the anesthesia. I waited, until finally she awoke. I will never forget the look on her face as she woke up.

She was mortified.

For now, though she had been begging to hear, the sounds were too much for her to cope with. Every scrape of a chair in the waiting room outside was like a shuttle train passing by. Each time the nurses clicked a pen she had to cover her ears.

She thought that sound would make her happy, but she had not considered the negatives.

Just like Zander Zane. He got into the music industry to make music that made him happy, but he didn’t count on the music becoming too much to cope with. The pressure of creating songs that gained approval from the fans outweighed the pleasure of making it, and just like Sam, Zander finds himself with hands over his ears, wishing for it to all go away. And like Sam, he turned to drinking and partying to numb himself from the auditory overload.

So class, be careful what you wish for, because it might just be too good to be true.