An Auditory Transition

"How do you spell _____? " a college friend of mine asked his roommate. "It's spelled __________!" I (the future editor) yelled back from several doors away. The classmate marveled that I had heard him—and perhaps wondered what else I had overheard. Indeed, as an undergraduate with acute hearing, I overheard more than I probably should have. A few years later, when I chided a fellow medical student for mumbling, he claimed I had poor hearing. However, at a health screening soon after, I learned that my hearing was exceptionally good. As I embarked on decades of university teaching, keen hearing continued to serve me. I could easily understand the most soft-spoken students. Also usefully, I could discern murmured conversations in the back of the classroom. Recently, though, more students seemed to mumble. I attributed the change to the masks being worn in the COVID pandemic. But when the masks came off, these students' enunciation still seemed lacking. More meeting rooms seemed to have poor acoustics—which I ascribed to ventilation systems enhanced to hinder virus transmission. I found myself mishearing words; in a noisy restaurant, a colleague's mention of a topless bar turned out to be of a tapas bar. I could no longer hear my old radio clearly. And when I replaced the radio, little improvement ensued. Maybe I, rather than the radio, was having the problem. Perhaps, I thought, I was now experiencing just average hearing. To document my current baseline, I saw an audiologist. He found that, in …