I Can Hear Everything

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

The world can be tough to navigate with one ear. Turns out, even having two comes with challenges.

I Can Finally Hear You Now

The world can be tough to navigate with one ear. Turns out, even having two comes with challenges.

Credit...Vincent Alban/The New York Times

Listen

· 13:15 min

By Scott Dodd

Scott Dodd edits Times fellows who report on disability issues. This is his personal disability story.

Oct. 29, 2026Updated 7:12 a.m. ET

My right ear hasn’t worked since I suffered a brain injury in middle school. Hearing on only one side makes life more complicated. For the nearly 25 years my wife and I have known each other, whenever we want to have a conversation, we need to make sure she’s on my good side.

“Left is best” is how she remembers it.

So it definitely broke the rules for us to sit on a blue plastic couch in a busy waiting room, with a loud TV to my left and my wife, Jaime, on my right. But we were at my audiologist’s office, following the doctor’s orders: Make small talk.

Jaime caught me up on the kids’ schedules and our weekend plans, then weighed our dinner options. It was the kind of conversation we’d had thousands of times.

But I had never been able to hear it from this direction. Now I could.

It seemed like such a small thing, but it felt profound. A lifetime of single-sided deafness had trained me to avoid this exact situation — a loud noise on my left, someone talking on my right.

And yet here we were, conversing casually like a normal couple that didn’t have to constantly triangulate seating arrangements.

I told Jaime to scoot over, and she slid down to the other end of the blue couch and kept talking. I could still hear her. Then she moved to a row of chairs about 20 feet away. The TV was still loud, and I could still hear her.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT