I sat in a cramped office yesterday, with all kinds of things jammed in my ears, staring into a monitor on which were displayed dual wave forms, while an unctuous male voice recording intoned, over and over:

A carrot is a long, reddish yellow vegetable which has several thin leaves on a long stem and which belongs to the parsley family. Carrots are grown all over the world in gardens, and in the wild in the fields.

The audiologist sat and stared intently at her own screen, while the observing student leaned over her shoulder. I successfully refrained from giggling until they took a break, whereupon I couldn’t help myself and kind of fell apart.

This is probably why, in the post-appointment write-up, the audiologist referred to me as “pleasant.”

The “carrot passage” is a “long-term average speech spectrum,” or “LTASS.” Having peculiar phrases sent directly to my ears is what I am paying for when I go to an audiologist and pay thousands of dollars, instead of just using my AirPod Pros as I had been doing since I lost my last aids. That, and the marvelous warranty and the distinguished charging case, yet another piece of electronics for which I have to find an outlet in my house.

I was paying for expertise and specialized equipment, and for the observing student, who is getting a doctorate in audiology because he played the viola all through school and then realized he needed to earn a living some other way.

I told him my brother was a trumpet player, but lost his lip. “Lost his lip?” blurted the audiologist, and I explained Embouchure Collapse; it turned out she, too, had been a trumpet player, in high school. She had never heard of losing one’s lip, though, so she probably wasn’t as serious about the trumpet as my brother was.

They had me remove and reinsert my hearing aids, which was when I found out I hadn’t been shoving my previous aids in far enough. Good to know. Maybe now I won’t lose them again.

I tried to pay at the desk after my visit, but the desk clerk couldn’t find any bill, so I asked for directions to the ladies room. While I was in the bathroom, she yelled my name through the bathroom door, which gave me a heck of a turn, and I went back to pay because the amount had popped up. It was a very large amount, for which I can now use Apple Pay because my medical care is up-to-date. The clerk couldn’t figure out how to charge me, and the other desk clerk had to help her.

I forked over my payment seamlessly, and wandered down to the street, a little unnerved because I didn’t feel as if I was hearing much better. That was because my hearing aids are excellent and the calibration was good, so I didn’t hear the silvery background jingling I used to get with my old aids, just all the sounds around me, clear and distinct.

I get very angry when people talk about not wanting to get old. If I didn’t get old, how else would I be permitted to have such entertaining and ridiculous experiences? Also, I already knew the carrot was in the parsley family, but now I will never be able to forget the fact.