[swingdjted]

I'm still pretty young at 34. I'm likely as sharp as I'm capable of being, and my vision is very good. My hearing is not so good. I will likely need hearing aids before I hit 50, probably much earlier. I spent a lot of years performing as an instrumentalist and playing as a DJ, and most of those years included a lot of farm and sawmill work during the day, which was equally loud. If I wasn't doing either of those things, I had a cassette walkman with headphones on. I also spent huge amounts of time running chainsaws for firewood, something I still do a lot, but now with hearing protection. Although I have backed off a lot of the music scene in recent times, I still do some music work occasionally with hearing protection. I didn't use hearing protection in my younger days, and I have some really serious regrets about that. I often frustrate my wife asking her to repeat stuff when I don't hear it.

Luckily at work I don't have to worry about that because my students are at an age where their voices can cut through anything, even when they're talking softly. Plus, they all know I have trouble hearing because I have given talks in our health classes about responsible treatment of one's ears, using my experiences as reference. Something tells me this new culture of earbuds is going to be some pretty bad news in a few years for a lot of people. If this goes to the extreme, hearing aids will be as common as eyeglasses.