Hearing Aid Advertisements

If, like me, you’ve been retired for some time now, and your mailbox, like mine, has become the repository of all sorts of health advertisements – vitamins, medicines, ointments, organic foods – all of course urgent offers, even discount checks, as incentives to purchases all guaranteed (or your money back if still alive) to slow down the aging process and renew your vigor and if you’re male awaken and enhance your sexual prowess to what it used to be – if you can still remember that far back – to when you were on the summit of the “bloom of youth” or as close to a Hell you didn’t believe in. In my case, and for several years now, I’ve been receiving almost monthly offers for various hearing aids, accompanied with generous checks as downpayment, besides. A particular brand touted better than all others and far more expensive, and based on latest technological breakthroughs and advances, etcetera, etcetera. In short, a bargain even at the high price. My hard-of-hearing mother fell for the carrot, so-to-speak, and purchased a four thousand dollar “top of the line” aid. Was it an improvement? Yes, she shouted, for background noises only! Tired of our shouting matches and her chronic complaints – and expletives – I decided to call the promotional company. Apologies were profuse, but no fault of the product. Rather my mother’s – her age, for one, her advanced hearing loss, for another. And as a consequence, with weak apologies, no hope for a refund. Frustrated, I made a final appeal that no more advertisements be sent to her and would they kindly remove her name from their mailing list, to which they agreed, and to which I responded: Sir, that’s the best news I’ll ever have to shout at her.