Déjà vu
Kuzzin Kris stopped by last evening to say “Welcome Home” and give us the news that she will be moving on in October! She’ll be headed toward Eugene, home of the Eugene Opera and employment opportunities not to be ignored. We are saddened but not surprised. After all, Kris is a bit of a gypsy when it comes to her living arrangements. This will be her 55th move (or is it 58th) in her lifetime! And it will be the third time she has ‘settled’ in Eugene.
With her was her good friend Wendy, here from her home in Alaska. Today the two of them head for a big meditation seminar in Portland and then Kris goes to Nebraska and a huge cattle ranch where she will sing at her granddaughter’s wedding! I think Wendy flies back to Anchorage but I’m not sure. The conversation took a sharp turn when I asked Wendy about her job.
Come to find out, she is a hearing aid consultant (I think there might be a fancier job title) for an Anchorage CostCo. No sooner had we heard that than the conversation shifted to the cost of hearing aids, all the new technology, how some hearing aids are connected to (if that’s the correct expression) blue tooth so you can get your cell phone calls directly into your ear… and other amazing things.
Historically…
What we didn’t learn was why hearing aids are so expensive and why they are not covered by medical insurance like glasses are. Presumably, buying hearing aids at CostCo is a good way to go – less expensive, good follow-up service, and so forth. Top of the line hearing aids run around $1500. Apiece. You do much better with two… I think that’s what she said. Both Nyel and I tuned out at that point. Out of our network.
In the 1940s my grandfather got a hearing aid. One. It probably didn’t cost a tenth of what it would now. He never did get used to it – too much ambient noise. We know the mechanics have come a long way since those days. But unlike other electronic technology, the prices have not come down. Heck, for the price of two sets of ‘state of the art’ hearing aids, we could equip ourselves with untold numbers of “devices” – notebooks and tablets and cell phones and even television sets.
Anyway… listening to others is pretty much on the way out as I see it. When the ‘all about me’ era switches to ‘all about you’ maybe we’ll take a better look. No, make that listen.
Jon Lucas went through Costco and Jo is the beneficiary by not having to repeat absolutely everything. In the regular market they are about $4,000 so Costco is a good deal.
Back in the 1960s if my grandfather’s car began making a funny noise he simply turned down his hearing aides and tooled down the road. My mother would drive the car and then tell him to take it to a mechanic.
Seems like your cousin only just moved to Oysterville, but Eugene is close enough to visit back and forth.