Road Apples
Oct. 12, 2009

Milk Duds and premonitions

By Tim Sanders

People sometimes have premonitions. Consider the following update:


UPDATE: Not long ago I wrote about the advantages of hearing devices like the Loud ’N Clear Personal Sound Amplifier, which costs only $14.95, as opposed to regular hearing aids which often cost as much as two or three grand for a matching pair.


Just last week I read an article in the Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA.) about 87-year-old Violet Bishop of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. What made her story interesting wasn’t that she had a hearing aid; many 87-year-olds have them. But what made this hearing aid special was that it fell out of her ear while she was lying in bed, eating a handful of Milk Duds, watching Dancing With the Stars.
She told reporter Paul Turner, “As I enjoyed the chocolate and caramel taste, it appeared that one of my Milk Duds was not as fresh as the others. One was rather crunchy and I could not get it to soften up, no matter how hard I tried.”
You guessed it. She finally removed the crunchy Dud from her mouth and discovered that it was actually her 90-year-old boyfriend’s pet goldfish, Raymond. No, wait, that was an altogether different column. What she found was that she’d been chewing on her hearing aid, which had fallen out of her ear while she was paying close attention to former House Majority Leader Tom “The Hammer” Delay moving across the dance floor with all the grace of ... well, of a former House Majority Leader called Tom “The Hammer” Delay. That would certainly explain why she was distracted.

Fortunately, she did no damage to her teeth, and was able to get the hearing aid repaired for only $199. There is a photo of Violet alongside that article, and she is smiling. My guess would be that she is smiling because she knows she dodged a bullet. If she had swallowed the thing, which was undoubtedly turned on, she’d have been doomed to hear really explosive stomach sounds until it passed through her digestive system, which in the elderly, depending on their colon health, could take several weeks.

I mention all of this because had she had enough sense to save her money by purchasing one of those $14.95 Personal Sound Amplifiers, she’d never have mistaken it for a Milk Dud. Mistaking a Personal Sound Amplifier, with its clothespin appearance, ear bud, and adjustable ear strap, for a Milk Dud would be like mistaking a 1957 Dodge hubcap for an Oreo. And even if worse had come to worse, and the Tom Delay Dancing With the Stars debacle had so distracted her that she had chewed on a Loud ’N Clear Personal Sound Amplifier for several minutes, there would have been no $199 repair cost. She could have replaced the whole thing for under 15 bucks.

So what does the Violet Bishop Milk Dud saga have to do with premonitions, you ask? Well, we all know people who have very serious, psychic-type premonitions. They’re always happy to tell us about those premonitions, too. Those premonition tales often go like this:


“Sorry to hear about Ernie.”

“Well sir, there ain’t no coincidences. Just last month I had a premonition about Ernie. I dreamed he was tooken aboard a beautiful boat by two angels, and he waved goodbye to me and said he was at peace. His face was all shiny and bright. That was no coincidence, it was a premonition.”
“But I heard Ernie got drunk and fell headfirst into an open septic tank. They said he’d probably thrashed around in there for hours before he expi9red.”
“Them’s only details. The main point is I HAD A PREMONITION!”

I was never very good at premonitions, but I certainly had one about the Idaho lady and her hearing aid. And it was very specific. It was three weeks ago, and Marilyn was making unnecessary comments about how my two Loud ’N Clear Personal Sound Amplifiers strapped to both sides of my head made me look goofy. I told her that maybe so, but at least I didn’t have to worry about losing them.

“I have a premonition,” I told her. “I feel very strongly that some poor woman in her late eighties, probably out in Idaho somewhere, living in a city with a silly French name nobody ever heard of, will soon drop one of those tiny, insignificant regulation hearing aids into a fistful of Milk Duds and eat the thing.”

“And her name? That must have scrolled across your premonition screen,” she said. She thought she was being cute.
“I see a flower and a clergyman,” I said. “I think that means her name will probably be Daisy Cardinal, or perhaps Rose Priest.” Not Violet Bishop, but darned close.
That’s the kind of premonition you can take to the bank. If you don’t believe me, you can always ask Marilyn.

Okay, so she probably won’t remember the conversation the same way I do, but she will admit that I once said it would be very easy for an elderly person to misplace his hearing aid unless he had it strapped to his ear. That’s close enough.