November 17 – “Purported”

I went back to the hearing aid place again yesterday for my regular follow-up.  They kind of hate to see me coming.  Oh, the hearing aids themselves actually work really well (at least they do from my perspective.  And Chris hasn’t been complaining about lout TV noises lately).  The attachment even works really when I watch a college football game on my phone in the car (a benefit I never before took advantage of).  it works well for phone calls and talking to people in my head, which I suppose was its only real purpose anyway. 

The problem came in what it was purported to be able to do.  Yep, I said “purported.”  Cailyn heard me say it yesterday.  Immediately wanted to know what that word meant.  Happy to oblige her with a definition, too.  Anything I can do to inspire a love of words in my little ones.  So what was it that the device claimed to do, but in fact really couldn’t do?  Well, after a few seconds it goes into sleep mode to save battery life.  I can appreciate that.  My phone does that, too.  But when it goes to sleep, it severs the connection with my phone without telling my phone that it will no longer be picking up signals until I manually push the appropriate button on the screen.  That means, as long as my phone’s Bluetooth is on and reads “connected” to the sleeping device, I get no sounds from the phone.  Zero.  They are sent to the black hole of the device’s sleep mode, never to be heard from again. 

So that led to forty-five minutes on the phone with a tech services representative.  He spent the whole time trying to fix something that wasn’t broken, but we couldn’t slow him down enough to communicate it to him.  Needless to say, he didn’t fix anything.  Still have the problem.  The audiologist promised to look further into the problem.  From my perspective … it still doesn’t do all that it was purported that it could do. 

James 3:13 says, “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.”

Father, thanks for little miracles like hearing aids.  They do make life easier.  Amen.