Fall on Deaf Ears
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday February 1, 2014

Between man and wife, listening is an art form. It is an elusive skill, requiring mental endurance and an air traffic controller’s concentration. (In our house, most conversations are near misses between my mouth and his ears). Moreover, listening requires self control – the word listen contains the same letters as the word silent. My family has no restraint. Usually, we’re too busy interrupting one another to hear what’s being said.  

The man of the house, however, has turned marital listening into an exercise in subterfuge. He has enough rat-cunning to convince me he’s paying attention to my every word, while really, he’s keeping track of the cricket score over my shoulder.

At stumps, I poked my head into his office and said: “By the way honey, what did you decide about tomorrow night?” He flashed me a meretricious smile: “Whatever you like, Blossom. I’m easy. You’re the social secretary, remember.”

And then our conversation degenerated into this tiresome patter:

“(Sigh) You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Depends…”

“Depends on what? Geez! Do you ever listen to a word I say?!”

“I was listening, I just didn’t think it was important enough to remember.”

Listening is now a prickly aspect of our relationship. I admit I do most of the talking, but he does most of the ignoring. To help himself annoy me more, my husband has mastered a second language: a vocabulary of eye rolls, gruntlets, exasperated head shaking and a raised right eyebrow (of doom). He uses these to stymie all conversation so he can continue reading about Nigella Lawson’s cocaine habit in peace.

I get bored unless I’m talking. I like to fill the gaps between conversations with  commentary. During the Sunday night movie I get in trouble for asking perfectly legitimate questions: 

“Hey! Is that Terence Stamp? Man! He’s aged hasn’t he? No, no, it’s Alan Rickman, isn’t it? Yup, it’s Alan Rickman. He was so good as the bad guy in Die Hard, remember honey? He had that amazing German accent.”

And then my bloke rocks his head on his neck and his right eyebrow strains to push up a forehead wrinkle:

“No, it’s not Terence Stamp and it’s not Alan Rickman, it’s Charles Dance. Now will you please be quiet. I’ve proven to you I’m listening, all right?

And then I squeeze his hand and snuggle into his hairy left thigh because I know Alan Rickman when I see him.

Of course, we now have another listening problem creeping into our  relationship. Apparently I don’t just have a talking problem, I have a hearing problem. No matter that my bloke has a mumbling problem.

He likes to mumble with his back to me. He talks to me sotto voce from his office down the hall. He thinks his conversation is so riveting I should be craning my neck to hear what he has to say. I’ve now been forced into a speech pattern that begins with “Pardon?” And he’s cheesed off with having to repeat himself.  

I wonder if my years in radio damaged my ears? I always wore the cans lopsided, covering my right ear, exposing my left, so I didn’t have to hear myself booming in stereo – mono was disconcerting enough. Maybe my right ear got sick of listening to my voice? Maybe my left ear went out in sympathy?

My teenage son likes to mock my hearing by playing me high frequency tones on his iPod. While everyone in the house is screwing up their faces and sticking their fingers in their ears, I blithely continue stacking the dishwasher. (Raising three children gives me enormous tolerance for high-pitched shrieks and wails).

And then 13-year-old son guffaws: “Hey Mum! Can’t you hear that? Are you deaf? It’s hurting my ears!”

So now I’m being dared to have a hearing test because my husband mumbles and my son plays stupid test-tones only dogs and flappy-eared children can hear.

I have no trouble hearing the 60 decibel repartee of my two best girlfriends. We oracles know each other so intimately we don’t even call it listening: we call it waiting our turn to talk. But I was nonplussed the other day, at our favourite cafe, when one of my besties leaned into me and said: “Luvvy, I think you may be shouting.”

“I’m not shouting, I’m just excited about getting a hearing aid.” Should the espresso machine compete with some really important news, I make sure my smiling and nodding more than compensate for any lack of listening.

So in the interests of marital harmony, I have bowed to familial pressure and agreed to get a hearing test. I’m not too worried – I had one five years ago and got a near-perfect score. Selective deafness, the audiologist whispered to his assistant. He thought I didn’t hear him, but I’m brilliant at lip-reading.