Turns out I did need another hole in my head, Mom.

When I was a kid I had a snacking habit. The Supermarket checkout aisle was my trap house.

Snickers. Three Musketeers. Twix. Oh my.

My mother, sensing my toothless future and the impact of more dental bills on her ability to pay rent, would tell me, “You need more candy like you need another hole in your head.”

I never kicked the snaccidents and her comment was prophetic, because last year I did get another hole in my head.

It started when I was 17. Conversations became more difficult to engage in. I began losing tone-of-voice cues and other nuances. I was going deaf. But, like my sugar addiction, I ignored it.

I got my first hearing aid at 26 after an ENT scolded me and told me I was a burden on my friends and family. He was a dick, but he wasn’t wrong.

Then, one morning last year, I woke up to the frightening sense that I couldn’t hear anything in my left ear. Even with my hearing aid. After another pleasant ENT visit, I learned my hearing was beyond the help of a hearing aid.

I cried in the parking lot. My daughter was just finding her voice and soon I wouldn’t be able to hear it at all.

So, I made the decision to go bionic.

Today, there is a little hole in the side of my head about two fingers behind my ear. There is a quarter-sized divot where they scraped out some skull so my cochlear implant would lay flush.

Unless I am just really sick of the neighbor’s dogs barking, there is a tiny speaker and microphone processor feeding sound through that divot, through a wire, through that pencil-lead-sized hole into the nerves behind my ear.

I can hear as well as about 80% of the population.

And, no, I still don’t want to take this email to a Zoom meeting.