Had a bad dream last night.

I dreamt of having a chance encounter with the very comely Mary Katharine Ham, the conservative journalist and blogger from Townhall.com. We were inside the lobby of a museum, and I somehow managed to engage her in a conversation. Only problem was, I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. My hearing aids completely failed to pick up her speech patterns, so I was left there to helpessly either nod while she talked or give blank stares. She quickly lost interest and blew me off, thinking I was a retard. All I could do was watch while she walked away, knowing I’d never be able to convince her otherwise.

Man was I depressed when I woke up. I think it’s obvious that the new hearing aids I’m trying out has been causing a lot of grief and anxiety for me. I want to hear better so I can engage people in conversation and not be afraid of putting myself out there so I could meet new people and escape this solitary bubble I’ve built for myself. But so far the aids just aren’t living up to expectations. I’m hoping programming adjustments will fix it, but I’ll have to wait till my next appointment before I’ll know for sure.

That dream reflected my worst fears too. People have a tendency to form opinions about me based purely on my disability, and if I can’t communicate with people normally, or have trouble understanding them, it’s automatically presumed that I’m either mentally underdeveloped, or to put it quite bluntly, that I’m just a flipping idiot with the equivalent IQ of a cardboard box. Nothing I say about anything will have any merit. I’m talked down to like I’m 7 years old, and there are times when I’m treated like one too.

Normally I wouldn’t care. But what scares me is the thought that no matter how many single women I meet, they will all look at me the same way because of my hearing loss: like I’m a retard. A handicapped piece of trash unworthy of their attention, much less their love. Whether it’s in dreams or in real life, it’s always been something that weighed heavily on my mind. I fear I’ll never live up to expectations, that I can never be the “perfect guy” they’re looking for, and for that I’ll always continue to be passed over until I’m well into my 70s, living alone in some dinky apartment somewhere with only a few dogs and cats to keep me company.

I can understand why some people settle now. Why they give up all hope and just hitch on to the first person who comes along that pays any kind of attention to them, even if that person ends up being the next Son of Sam. Will that be my future as well?

Crap, I gotta get these hearing aids fixed.

Today I get fitted with my new $6000 hearing aids, the Destiny 1600 by Starkey. I’m not expecting miracles, or the ability to hear conversations from 100 yards away, but it would be nice to have a normal conversation in noisy settings for once without finding myself trapped in a puffy shirt situation.

I grew up hoping with each new generation of hearing aids that passed, that the technology would finally advance enough to give me the level of hearing I so desperately needed and wanted. I wanted to be able to hear someone whispering in my ear at the movie theater, or the sound of crickets chirping in the early hours of the morning, or the sound of my car jingling its merry little tune whenever the keys were left in the ignition. I wanted to be able to carry on a decent conversation in places like the subway, or at ballparks, or anywhere I happened to be.

But most of all, I no longer wanted to be afraid. Afraid that if someone asked me for help, I wouldn’t be able to tell them because I’d have no idea what they were saying. Afraid to approach beautiful women I saw in everyday life, not so much because I was shy and ugly, but also because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hear a single thing they said to me.

But after 27 years of wearing all different kinds of hearing aids from all different kinds of manufacturers, I still have yet to realize those dreams.

Will today be the day? After so many years of disappointments and heartaches, has the moment finally arrived where I can at long get my life back?

We shall see.

I just came back from the audiologist and learned how much my new hearing aids would cost.

$5,700.

Fortunately health insurance is footing roughly half of the bill, but I’m still out close to 3 grand. @#%$ man, and I was getting so close to paying off my credit card debt too.

These are supposed to be the top of the line hearing aids though, something called the Destiny 1600 which is made by Starkey. Hopefully they’ll prove to be far superior to the ones I’m wearing now. Hell for 5700 bucks I better fricking believe they were sent from heaven.

One of the reasons why my social life is so nonexistent has been partly because I just couldn’t participate in conversations when it took place in noisy environments (which is basically everywhere). I could only go “Mmmmhmmm, uh huh, interesting, uh huh, mmhmmm” meanwhile not having the first bloody clue what the the person was saying. Sometimes I got lucky and could get away unscathed. Most of the time I didn’t. What surprised me about it all was that I thought it would be different once I went from analog to digital hearing aids. Nope. It was all still pretty much the same.

However, from what they say about these new hearing aids, they’re promising the moon. We’ll see. At the very least I’ll finally be able to get away from my current crook of an audiologist, who always found new and creative ways to pad her bills so I’d end up having to pay out of pocket for some of the repair expenses, even though my hearing aids were insured. Now I’m going back to the audiologist I had before her, a good guy who had always been straight with me, and whose warranty covered everything for 4 years and more (instead of the only two years that I had with this money grubbing ho). The only reason I went with another audiologist after him was because he only dealt with Starkey hearing aids, and they still did not have digital aids available for someone with my profound degree of hearing loss, even though it was what I wanted and I badly needed to replace the 6 year old analogs I’d been wearing back then. Oy, if I only knew, I would have bit the bullet and waited just a little while longer.

Now it looks like Starkey not only have digitals now, but even leapfrogged the competition with all these crazy new advancements to their technology. I’m still guarded about how effective the new aids will be, but for the first time in a long time I have hope. Maybe these new aids will finally be able to help me get back a part of my life that I’ve been missing for so long.

I woke up late this morning, and not being in any hurry to get to work, I lazily surfed the Daily Blog Tips site, looking for advice and suggestions that I could apply to my own blog. I came across one post that linked to this article on how bloggers can use social networking sites like StumbleUpon to boost their traffic. So with nothing better to do 10 minutes before I had to head on to work, I submitted my blog post about women emulating men, yawned, then went to get dressed. My jaw unhinged and dropped when I went back to check my stats one last time.

The result of that seemingly innocuous submittal was the biggest traffic count I’ve ever seen since I started this blog. I generated over 50 visits in just under 15 minutes, and it was still going strong by the time I left for work.

I think I may have stumbled onto something here (uhhh, no pun intended). To be honest though, I wasn’t able to wrap my head around the appeal of social networking sites, partly because I couldn’t understand exactly how some of them worked. Sites like StumbleUpon, Flickr, YouTube and Last.FM (all of which I belong to) were easy enough to figure out, but places like Del.icio.us, Digg and Reddit made less sense to me. I think part of it might be because I wasn’t interested in what the most “digged” articles or highest ranked posts of the day happened to be. That perspective might change though as I give these sites a harder look. But one thing that will never, ever change is my utter disdain for places like MySpace, and other social networks that emulate them. The ilk you find at these online ghettos is something I just can’t abide by.

After thinking about what I wrote earlier about being set apart, I realized it isn’t people I don’t want to associate myself with: it’s ugly people. Not physically ugly mind you, but people who just don’t know how to be civilized. You see it all the time on MySpace and YouTube sites. People who drop f-bombs in comments for YouTube videos that show nothing more than a harmless clip of Big Bird singing on Sesame Street. People who feel the compelling need to take snapshots of their hairy buttingtocks and moon me on MySpace. Why? Why do they do this? Why must people always be so utterly depraved and tasteless? All I want is a little civility, to be able to enjoy surfing to a Peter Cetera’s MySpace page without seeing disgusting, lewd (and illegal) photos in the comments, or enjoy a YouTube video without some schmuck cluttering up the comments with mindless f-bombs. Crikey mate, get a grip you psychotic blokes.

Fortunately, though, I may have stumbled (again, no pun intended) onto a way to draw some of the better quality Internet surfers out there to my home on the web, all by making legitimate use of the social networking tools. I have to figure by doing so, eventually a few gems will end up at my doorstep and become regular readers, even if it means they had to ride a wave of sewage to get here.

Paradoxically, the kind of people I’d like visit to my blog would actually be those who are unfamiliar with Internet usage. I know it’s strange, but I think I’d enjoy the perspective of folks who rarely use computers (much less the Internet) more than those who basically spend their entire lives online (like I do). My hearing loss precludes me from being able to enjoy a healthy and active social life, so to compensate I do a lot of my talking through the keyboard. Still, I think it’d be nice to meet people (specifically a hot babe), who could pull me into the real world, and help me enjoy all that it has to offer there.

But until then, gotta keep on surfing.

The saga at work continued today as I signed in and was immediately tapped by the boss to go talk to him in his office.

“Linc, you made a lot of mistakes yesterday on the phone.”

No sh–, Sherlock. Maybe it might just have something to do with the fact that I’m HEARING IMPAIRED??

“Well, like I indicated earlier, I have trouble with the phones because of my hearing loss, which is compounded by the fact that during those hours, we usually get calls from clerks who are hard to understand and speak broken English.”

“Ok, but it’s your responsibility to get those calls and accurately take down the information.”

What the hell??

“Dude, my responsibility only goes so far as I am properly accommodated,” I said, barely managing to contain my anger. “We all had an understanding here that there would always be someone with me to handle the phones, so this situation is usually avoided altogether. That’s the way it’s been done for years, and we’ve never had a problem.”

“Well I’m no longer authorizing overtime, so there won’t be people available to stay at those hours.”

“If Mickey or Prue agree to come in at 9 instead of 6:30AM, that should help cover the hours, and there won’t be any need for overtime, right?”

“……………………………”

“Right??”

“It won’t work.”

“Why not?”

Then he gave me this song and dance about how I would have to draw up a proposal, that the union would need to get involved, and he would have to present it to his boss, who would then have to sign off on it, blah blah blah…. I looked at him like he had lost his mind. The workers in my division have had to change working hours continuously over the past few years, but whenever a change needed to be made, it never needed anything more than a simple verbal agreement from our former bosses. So it was understandable that I was left to wonder what in the blue frick this guy was talking about. I realized though that I was getting fed the same bull as before when I made the scheduling request to have my hours changed so I could attend law school. I knew now that he had been jerking me around since the beginning.

And then he said something I’ll never forget.

“Look, if you’re not willing to take on the responsibility of answering the phones, we may be forced to dock your pay.”

“So because I have a hearing disability, I should be punished because you refuse to accommodate me?”

I think he realized his slip, because he started to backpedal. But the cat had already been out of the bag. He had just broken federal law with his threat, crossing a line that kindled something fierce inside me. I had been wronged. My coworkers had been wronged. He was a bully, a liar, and a horrible supervisor. And now I was going to make him pay. I was out for blood. I felt a charge in my veins, and a light somewhere inside my head went on. I knew what it was too: the unmistakable and unquenchable thirst for JUSTICE. It fed my desire to get into law enforcement. It was what fueled my efforts to pursue law school.

And now it had been kicked into overdrive.

I drew up a letter that detailed every grievance I had with him, along with the grievances my coworkers also had. I also got out my camera and took pictures of the mouse droppings that have been on the desks. Armed with all this, I went to see my union rep, a spunky lady who had successfully gone to bat for us in the past, and laid it all out for her. People high up the chain of command were notified, a buzz of activity had taken place behind the scenes, and I now find myself gearing up for what is sure to be an interesting (and perhaps volatile) confrontation tomorrow with my good boss when he realizes what I’ve done.

War has been declared.