The hearing test. It is the end of the line for many of us. Oceans of cartoon ink have been spilled about the hearing test; now I shall add mine.

We have to take a hearing test at least once a year. If you are going on a mobilization, you’ll take another one prior, and another one when you come back. And I have never doubted a decision –or my senses– as much as I have in that little airless booth.

You sit in a tiny booth, heavily soundproofed and usually a bit too warm and humid (sometimes you get one that is too cold; they are never comfortable) with these tight earphones over your ears, waiting to mash a button to let the test providers know you heard that tiny, tiny, barely noticeable “hoot, hoot, hoot” at the extreme low range of your hearing.

Or did you?

A lot of the test is psychological. You doubt your senses, you doubt your hearing, you doubt your perceptions, and you doubt your doubts.

Then one day I’ll be outside and I hear something in the real world, far away but distinct, barely perceptible to anyone else I am with, and I want to record the moment and save it as proof that I am not, in fact, going insane.