This hearing thing hit me a few days ago when one of my hearing aids went missing for no reason. It was not in my ear. The question I pondered, sitting there in a funk, was, "If it's missing and I find it, was it really lost?" I spend a lot of time on questions like that -- issues that illuminate our time.

I turn a deaf ear to logical suggestions on where to put one of these things when I remove it from my ear. My record is not good. Once, I lost a hearing aid in church; I removed it because the sermon was making me feel guilty and, right there in a house of worship, it disappeared -- a work of the devil, probably.

Later, I stepped on one, breaking it beyond repair. And, a few months ago, one just disappeared in our little condo, never to be seen. So when one was missing the other day, I began to be sick.

These are not baubles.

I like mystery stuff and know that a good investigator looks for clues in every possible place, so I went to the trash containers -- two of them in the kitchen, ready to be dumped. Maybe that little fellow was in the trash-garbage thing, I thought, so I began my meticulous search, finding stuff I did not remember ever seeing.

Mrs. V did not laugh, but I believe she wondered why I was playing in the garbage. The missing ear thing was not in either basket -- the first time I looked. So I went at it again, being careful to restore the garbage to the neat, orderly state it was in when I began. That was the hard part.

One more time, I muttered, so I sifted again. This is demeaning work for a fellow of my caliber; OK, maybe for a Purdue person, but not for me. But I persevered before just giving up, saying what losers hate to hear: "It was a good try, anyway."

Mrs. V, kindly, but sly sometimes, wondered if the little thing had fallen and bounced under a big chair. I fell for that, a hint that it was time to move the chair and vacuum where it had been sitting for quite a spell. Nothing under there except a dime and two pennies. I claimed them.

Early the next morning, I stepped out on our screened porch to check some plants and look toward the rising sun for inspiration. There on the floor, in silent repose, was my missing hearing aid. I wanted to shout "Eureka, I have found it," but some guy said that years ago, so I nonchalantly reported the find to you know whom. I think she was glad I would not rearrange the trash again and make a new mess that she might have to clean up.

We never will know how the hearing aid got to the porch. Maybe it just likes flowers or was listening to the birds. I have thought that hearing aids should have little beepers so they could be found when an old guy misplaces them, but that makes no sense. How could a hearing-disadvantaged fellow hear the beep?

I don't wear my aids on the golf course, but once, I paid for it. My old buddy was behind me and I forgot. His shot hit me in the back; if he yelled "fore," I didn't hear him. He didn't hear what I said, I hope.

Anyway, my hearing aid was not lost, only hiding among the flowers. So let the Father's Day calls begin.

(by post-trib.com)

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