SWC March 2009 Newsletter

Dear Maggie,

My fiance likes to take me out to dinner quite often (yes, he's a keeper!). The problem is, with my hearing impairment, I tend to misunderstand what the waitress says to me when asking for my meal order. For example, the other evening at the restaurant, the waitress asked me "Do you want soup or salad?" I replied "A Super Salad - that sounds great! May I ask, what is super about it?" The waitress and my fiance chuckled and told me I misunderstood what the waitress said. She asked me soup OR salad, not whether I wanted a "super salad". Boy, did I feel dumb!

How can I prevent this embarrassment in the future when ordering at a restaurant?

Signed,
I'll just have the soup

Dear Soup, My advice is to: -first advise the waitress that you have difficulty hearing so please face you when speaking. - next, tell that waitress to take the chewing gum out of her mouth so that she can be understood since she’s chewing that gum like a cow in the fields waiting for a milking. - And lastly, I don’t know how long you’ve been engaged to this keeper but I’d advise him that if he chuckles and tells you that you’ve misunderstood, he’ll be wearing dentures in the future.

And most importantly, don’t feel dumb. Hearing people are clueless and on most occasions need to educated about hearing loss.

Dear Maggie,

I have a cochlear implant and would like to know how I could use this to improve my love life?

From a curious Cochlear Implant user.

Dear Curious,

For starters, I hope you’re not using any loose parts to expand on improving your love life. I would be very concerned about losing them in all the wrong places and then cleaning them…..YIKES! NO, NO…not the way to go. You could end up electrocuting yourself as well, after reconnecting.

So listen up, I’m guessing you want to hear the sweet nothings whispered into your ear, the sound of your partner’s breath? Treat your implant as though it were part of the sexual ritual.

Leave it turned on, take in all the sounds to enhance the experience. Listen carefully. Listen to the sound of the touch, the sound of the smell.The sound of movement.

However, be warned, if your partner has an implant as well, make sure to be careful that the base of your heads do not get magnetically stuck at the implant site. Yikes, you’d be like Siamese twins walking into your cochlear implant center to be disconnected.

So, keep yourself connected at all times to improve your love life (except of course in the shower) and experience the sound of love..

DISCLAIMER: The Dear Maggie column is for "entertainment purposes" ONLY and should be viewed as such. But just in case you need to know, Dear Maggie is a bright, intelligent, gossipy, insightful wo-mon who takes pride in hearing (tongue in cheek) her own words come out of her mouth. Maggie will tell it like it is, hold the mirror up to your face and make you see what you don't want to see. Maggie is neither a licensed professional nor bartender and you should feel free to seek other opinionated people's advice