HEARING FOR OTHER REASONS – PART 4

Auditory information which contributes to our well-being and quality of life isn’t all about speech and communication.

For example, this morning as I was driving my little boy to his daycare, I heard how cold it was before I even ventured outside the car. It was well below zero – cold enough so that the snow makes a different sound under the tires, a kind of squeaking rather than the more familiar low-pitched crunching. It’s the sound of miserable, even dangerous cold. This might be a tiny sound, but these little redundancies in our senses can add up to big things; I already knew it was cold outside because the newspaper and radio warned me, but the auditory information made it very clear that we needed to bundle up and keep the car in the garage so it would start!