Professional Loss of Hearing
by Will-o-the-Wisp Douglasingh
by Will-o-the-Wisp Douglasingh
Floor
sanding is a prohibitive job and it causes the loss of hearing in those who do
it. My theory is that many professionals have lost a degree of hearing because
of sanding their own floors. Most university professors of whatever rank suffer
from an affliction called auditory incephalitis. Werner does. So does Welling
down the hall from me. Wiebe most of all hears poorly. Warkentin, Weber, Wieselfaért,
Weckenheiser and Wol all suffer from this infirmity. All of them, I would
venture to guess, received their loss from floor sanding. None of them know the
cause. Many of them do not know that they cannot hear well, or at all.
“What?” they will say each and every time
someone addresses them. Inaudibility they call it in those who speak to them.
Miserable quietness they confess to their closest friends, especially themselves
before the morning mirror. The world has gone silent, they assert in sometimes
quite loud tones as they wait at the bus stop. People need to start feeling
proud and good about themselves, they begin, peering down the street to the
corner hoping for the square of black and orange far off. People should start
speaking up, for goodness sakes, they expand, waiting, briefcases in their hands.
All of them have sustained their deafness
from floor sanding. They teach and research September to April. With the coming
of May they feel a desire to refresh themselves. Spiritual renewal comes
through physical activity, they vociferate, and think about what they might do
to engage in it. They all hit on floor sanding. Why? Because of a strange set
of circumstances. Each of them has purchased a house within walking distance of
the university, or near a bus stop. The areas of the city they purchase in are
not the lowly areas, obviously, but always they individually buy in a
neighbourhood with a hundred year-old homes. These are not too expensive but
once were considered elite. They are all run down. That they are run down is
the very reason they appeal to these economists, historians, literature types,
for obvious reasons. Economists do not like to spend money. Historians do not
like to purchase anything new, and they do not like to spend money. Literarians
appreciate the story in an older home and do not like to spend money. So these
various disciplines purchase houses in similar states of dilapitation, with the
same promise of a return on
rehabilitation and high station. Not willing to spend a kopeck on
professional help, each of these men or women determines early on that he will
himself be the repairman. He will make his home his hobby, and get thereby both
much needed diversion and exercise. As well as profit.
Each of this drove of professors of
various levels of advancement (including the lowly sessional and lecturer, not
to name the instructor) rents floor-sanding equipment. He rents a large sander
machine with replaceable sanding circles. He rents an edger with replaceable
blade in case of damage from a nail. He purchases a bucket of floor varnish
such as Varetane or Urethane. Mostly, now, he makes the mistake of purchasing
water-based varnish, not knowing that it is not durable despite the claims of
the paint outlets. Then he begins to sand, using the large machine, which is
especially designed to cover quickly large areas of hardwood. He finishes these
big places and then notices that he must begin the edges not accessible to the
big machine. He kneels, takes hold of the edger, and begins to edge the edges.
It runs at a gazillion rpm and makes the highest pitched noise imaginable. He
sands his way along the perimeters of the living room, the bedrooms, the
hallway, and then finds himself in the front entrance, narrow, echoy, and the
very location of his, and all his colleagues,' hearing loss. He sands away
without covering his ears or inserting in them plugs or paper. An hour later he
feels dizzy and goes for a lie-down. He feels odd next day and the next, but
when he gradually begins to feel less odd he assumes that he has recovered and
decides that he is glad that project is over with. He resumes teaching in the
fall but cannot hear well. He does not know he does not hear well. He assumes
that everyone around him has taken to becoming more silent and less audible.
