September 16, 2015 Article

The Old Coot is hearing things

By Merlin Lessler

Has this happened to you? You’re sitting on the sofa watching TV. Well, more likely you’re zoned out, waiting to watch TV while an endless series of commercials hog the cable feed. The phone rings. If you still have a landline, you get up and go to answer it, only to discover it wasn’t your phone ringing; it was a phone in the ad on TV. Even if you got rid of your landline years ago, you still get up, or start to; it’s an automatic response. The ad people are smart; they know we zone out after 10 seconds of advertising and since most commercial breaks go on for two minutes or more, they do something to get our attention. They know we come preprogrammed, just like Pavlov’s dogs. Ring a dinner bell and a dog salivates; ring a phone bell and we wake up. And, in my case, get up and answer it.

The ability of the ad people to snap us to attention is a real science. The first step in the process was to increase the volume of the commercials. Even though the FCC outlawed the practice more than 40 years ago, the networks still do it. They know the agency isn’t paying attention so why not make ads loud? We use our remotes to crank the volume down. That’s when the ringing phone comes in. Sometimes they switch to a ringing doorbell. I swear it’s an exact match to the bell at our house. It gets my attention every time. Another Pavlov’s dog deal, but I’ve trained myself to ignore it. Every so often it will be followed by a loud knock. Someone really is at the door. I say, “I’m sorry; I couldn’t hear the bell. My hearing isn’t what it used to be.” It’s a lie. But, when you’re an old coot, it’s a believable lie

And, it’s not just at home, this ringing that gets my attention. It happens in the car too. I’m tooling along in an old coot stupor with the radio playing and all of a sudden I’m startled into consciousness; a siren is sounding. I look around to get ready to pull over, and then figure out it’s just the radio. My blood pressure settles back down and I return to my zombie state. Then, a Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! brings me back to life. The radio again. This time it’s a car dealer’s ploy to get my attention. I make a mental note, “Never buy a car from that dealer!”

I settle down, but this time my blood pressure only makes it half way back to normal. Then, the phone rings. The ad people get me again. Intellectually, I know it’s the sound of a house phone and I’m in a car, but it doesn’t matter, I’m a Pavlov dog. I start to get up; thankfully the seat belt prevents me from doing so. I guess I deserve it, my excessive use of “back in my day” to start a conversation has a similar effect on people within earshot. It gets them up too. But, in their case, it’s for good reason; they need to get far away as fast as possible or subject themselves to a long-winded boring reminiscence.