Harold feared that his wife Dorothy wasn’t hearing as well as she used to and he thought that if she was going deaf that she might need a hearing aid.
He wasn’t quite sure how to approach her about this delicate matter, so he telephoned the family Doctor to discuss the problem with him.
The Doctor told him that there is a simple informal test the husband could perform to give the Doctor a better idea about her hearing loss.
“Here’s what you do” said the Doctor. “Stand about 40 feet away from your wife and in a normal conversational speaking tone see if she hears you. If not, go to 30 feet, then 20 feet and so on until you get a response”.
So that evening, while his wife was in the kitchen cooking dinner and Harold was in the den, he thought to himself, “I’m about 40 feet away from the old girl now, let’s see what happens”.
So in a normal tone he called out to his wife, “Honey, what’s for dinner?”
No response…
So Harold moved closer to the kitchen. He was now about 30 feet from his wife and repeated, “Dorothy, what’s for dinner?”
Still no response…
Next he moved into the dining room where he was about 20 feet from his wife and asked, “Honey, what’s for dinner?”
Again he got no response…
So, he walked up to the kitchen door, which was about 10 feet away.
“Honey, what’s for dinner?” he called out.
Again there was no response…
FInally, he walked right up behind her.
“Dorothy, what’s for dinner?” he shouted in a loud voice.
“FOR GOODNESS SAKE HAROLD – FOR THE FIFTH TIME – IT’S CHICKEN!”
Image used under a Collective Commons License from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Traditional_BTE_hearing_aid.jpg
