Professional Loss of Hearing

Professional Loss of Hearing
       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.