What is all that noise???

I was brushing my teeth two days ago, when I realized that I cannot see the bathroom sink again.  With my face so close to the faucet (I was spitting out the toothpaste foam in my mouth), I was horrified to see that my white bathroom sink was actually grey.  I immediately wondered about the floor.

I am not buying new glasses again so soon.
I am blaming the sink.
It must be too white for proper vision.

That little tidbit of knowledge was tucked away in the corner of my mind when I noticed something else in the wee hours of this morning whilst watching bad, bad, bad disaster movies on YouTube.  [I just recently discovered this feast of wretched movies, such as Magma: Volcanic Disaster.]  The sound on my still-relatively-new Macbook just doesn't seem loud to me at all.  I finally decided that I would get out my ancient-but-really-nice noise canceling headphones I got back in the dark ages when I was still flying on planes.  I didn't bother switching out the batteries so that I could use the noise-canceling feature; I just used them as plain headsets.

As I was watching the movie, I kept trying to figure out what was wrong with my computer.  I mean, I was most certain that more than one video was playing at a time, for I heard all this stuff besides the dialogue and cheesy background music.  Only, whenever I paused the video, the other sounds would stop.  The movie was almost over when I finally figured out what was happening.  I could actually hear the background/ambient noise that was recorded with the dialogue. For example, in a bar scene, I could hear other people (non-main characters) talking, the music on the jukebox, the buzz of the fan, etc.  Do you get the picture??

I have known for a long time that I have hearing issues.  But I mostly ignore it.  I mean, as I mentioned before, to listen to music, I turn the bass off and the treble up.  I thought it was "normal" sounding until Becky told me whilst we were driving to my father's funeral that she just couldn't stand the music anymore ... it was distorted too much for her to enjoy it.  To me, it sounds just fine.

A lot of my vision issues are because my brain is simply not "translating" the information received by my eyeballs.  Those pesky nerves.  I began to wonder just how much I have been missing in my movies and television shows and spent some time plowing through video stream after video stream.

I felt like a dolt.
How could I not know all that I was missing??

I wondered if this is like sticking my face close to the sink to see.  Is using headphones like sticking my ear up to a speaker?  I also wonder if this is just from getting old, from being on the downhill to 50.

I mean, I have noticed several old people things of late:  My face might get me carded all the bloody time, but my hands are starting to hold wrinkles and are rather dry.  I have age spots, with one on my eyebrow that still surprises me when I look in the mirror because the lack of visual clarity makes it look to me like I have a mutant eyebrow.  My eyelids are also ... wet or sweaty or something, that makes me want to smother them in eyeshadow all the time, only I stopped wearing make-up most days.  Most of the hair on my legs is not growing anymore, though I could wish my shins would take a cue from the rest of my legs.  I have some of those red vein splotches, too.  My heels are all cracked (which is gross).  I have skin tags on my neck (also gross).  And I now have very, very, very thin eyelashes.  I find the latter just plain odd, for I finally see a "dramatic" change when I use mascara. [Back in the dark ages, I mostly wore clear mascara because I didn't need much help in that department.]

I cheer for my grey hairs every day, but they are just so darned reluctant to appear.  [I really, really, really do not find it a compliment to be taken for ever so much younger than my real age.]  I have liked that the texture of my hair has coarsened, so that it is not so darned fine and limp (translate that:  I finally can get some pouf up top if I actually spend time on my hair).

I don't really mind the changes ... even the gross ones because mostly I cannot see them unless I stick my face up close to them.  I am even wondering if it really matters that I cannot hear the ambient noise of a show or movie.  If I can hear the folk talk, isn't that all I need???

Still, using the headphones freaks me out a bit.  Were I still a researcher, however, I would find it kind of interesting to do some data collection as to where lies biggest audio difference.  Does production date matter?  Does production quality matter?  Are there differences between television and movies?  Does hearing ambient sound affect engagement with media?  Does it affect plot comprehension?

I miss being a thinking person.