The most important invention in your lifetime is…

I’ve worn hearing aids since I was 4. Was playing in the road like all 4 year olds and didn’t hear the car coming. So that was 1965? Yep, the box with cords and one aid on my “best ear”. Went to nursery school, played on the monkey bars, brownies, sat in the front row at school-I’m pretty smart, and with two older brothers and two older sisters who read to me, a dad who was sure to enunciate when he spoke, I had a pretty good command of the English language!

Cartoons? Not so much, can’t lip read cartoons now can we? And no closed captioning!

Then we moved to the city, and as a preteen behind the ear hearing aids came to be, and the sound quality ramped up a bit. I could hear birds! Still movies were hard, going out in the dark was hard, school was hard when the teacher faced the blackboard. I was shy, I should have asked for more help-self advocacy from year one was not taught, plus I had my family to help?

The tele-coil to use on the phone was the next thing, but workplace accommodation wasn’t such a thing then, they didn’t understand that louder was not the issue, I needed to shape the sound.

Bluetooth and a smart phone that does closed captioning! And FaceTime! And smart TV!

Still a long way to go….