Around my 50th birthday, I noticed my hearing wasn't quite as good as it used to be.

By 55, I was answering yes to all the questions in those cheesy hearing aid ads: Do you often miss words in conversation? Are you the only one in the group not laughing after a punch line?

I got by, but hearing loss for a newspaper reporter is like voice loss for a TV news anchor.

Covering a third runway appeal before the state Supreme Court, I couldn't follow what the justices and attorneys were saying inside the high-ceilinged court chamber.

The hardest person to hide my condition from was Marge:

"We'll have to buy a lot of chicken wire," I would reply to Marge.

"I said, 'Let's pick up Dick's son at the airport,'" Marge would counter. "What did you think I said?"

"Err, 'Let's raise chickens in the carport'?"

Well, you never know what a wife will come up with and much of being a husband is playing defense.

For a long time, Marge assumed I just wasn't listening to her.

That may have been an accurate assumption.

After all, a wife will tell you what she is going to tell you, tell you, and then tell you what she told you.

If a husband paid attention all the time, his head would explode-just too much information. Besides he would miss a lot of TV baseball action.

But despite the embarrassment of having people constantly sneak up on me or jumping out of my chair to rush toward a voice speaking to me, I didn't do anything.

I figured 55 was just too young to wear a hearing aid.

After careful consideration, I settled on 58 as old enough to start wearing hearing instruments.

So this winter, about midway between my 60th and 61st birthdays, I scheduled a hearing test.

That's worse than the national average of seven years that people wait between first noticing hearing loss and seeking help, according to Rebecca Grady, co-owner of Highline Audiology in Burien.

A spouse tells them their hearing is bad or their snotty kids start making them the butt of jokes behind their back.

Many places offer free hearing screening.

"They come in with the objective that they will prove to their spouse that they are OK," Grady reports. "They say it's just that t everyone around them mumbles."

If the problem is a waxy buildup in the ears, about half the time a quick wash will restore normal hearing, Grady says.

Right before my test, I discovered all those years I had been an idiot. Bill Clinton has been unobtrusively wearing devices in both ears since age 51 and he's still Elvis.

Sure enough, my audiologist diagnosed mild to moderate hearing loss in both ears and a physician prescribed hearing aids.

Grady notes that baby boomers grew up in a noisier world than their parents. Our past pleasures have come back to haunt us.

Unfortunately, I didn't fry the hair cells of my inner ears playing in a garage rock band or careening through Big Sur with a half-ton of flaming Harley Davidson steel between my legs.

The only blame I can assign is to my third oldest brother whose alleged grass allergies consigned me to endless hours behind a noisy lawn mower as a teenager.

Anyway, I chose the popular baby boomer vanity hearing aids. The devices hide behind the ears with flesh-colored tubes discreetly running down into the ear canals.

When smart-aleck kids taunt me, I tell them I am a Secret Service agent and start whispering importantly into my wrist.

I bought the instruments at a discount place so we only had to skip two mortgage payments.

I don't know if my hearing is completely back to 20/20. I still have some problems with low-talkers and people who insist on conversing across a crowded room.

But I certainly hear more clearly now.

After wearing them for a while, I discovered my ears produce enough wax to supply a candle factory. They were acting more like plugs than aids.

So I got a spiffy cleaning tool and a fancy remote with three settings and a volume button.

The only feature the remote lacks is a mute button for when Marge tries to give me too much information.

Eric Mathison can be reached at hteditor@robinsonnews.com or 206-388-1855.