In the early days of Saturday Night Live, the late, great Gilda Radner had a character in her repertoire by the name of Emily Litella. Emily was a hard-of-hearing older lady who was given to tirades about some issue she had heard about on TV and misconstrued due to her deafness. Ms. Litella would appear on the Weekend Update segment of SNL and opine about subjects ranging from violins (instead of violence) on TV, to the Supreme Court’s decision on the deaf penalty, to the endangered feces act.

My favorite Emily Litella discourse was the time she sang “I Will Follow Him” to express her undying love for Tom Snyder, a popular New York TV talk show host at the time. “I will swallow him;” she intoned while a horrified Jane Curtin stared, open-mouthed. “I will swallow him wherever he will go…I love him, I love him, I love him, and where he goes, I’ll swallow…”

And after every one of Emily’s befuddled discourses, the stunned Weekend Update anchor (in the early shows Chevy Chase, or “Cheddar,” as Emily called him, and later Jane Curtin, whose barely disguised dislike for Ms. Litella earned her a sweetly uttered, “Bitch,” on more than one occasion) would explain what the actual issue was. Seeing the light, Emily would look in the camera and with a little smile, close with the line, “Never mind.”

I’ve been thinking about Emily Litella a lot lately. Here’s why:

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, older members of my family or anyone I spoke to at work older than thirty would invariably caution me about what was awaiting me as I careened inexorably toward middle age and beyond. It was as if seeing me, in the sweetness of youth, produced this knee-jerk reaction that compelled them to admonish me.

“Look at you, what do you know? You’re young,” my forty-two-year-old uncle would say, apropos of nothing, shaking his head. “Wait. Wait until you get to be my age. You’ll see. The legs’ll be the first to go.”

At work an older gentleman would turn every conversation, whether idle chit-chat about the weather or serious talk about current world events into a warning about aging. “You’ll see when you get older. You’ll be able to tell when there’s rain on the way. The knees’ll be the first to go.” Another day the first to go were the eyes, then the back, then the memory would go first. After a while, I started hiding from this human Eeyore; every exchange with this man made me want to run home, dive into bed, pull the covers over my head, and stay there forever.

I’m older now and I can state with supreme certainty that back in the day, my elders were completely wrong. It’s not the legs, knees, eyes, or memory that go first. Nope. It’s the hearing. The hearing is the first to go. I don’t know when this gradual deafness started happening to me, but I can tell you, it’s damn annoying.

At the office, I’ve made people repeat themselves two or three times before realizing what they’re trying to tell me. I frequently jump out of my chair if anyone comes up behind me and says hello. Whenever this happens, I say that I’m so focused on whatever I’m doing, I block out everything else around me, but that’s only partly true. I do have acute powers of concentration, but I’m also going deaf at the speed of light.

I don’t hear my smart phone’s ringtone announcing an incoming call unless the device is next to me on my desk. If it’s in my pocket or handbag, it might as well be miles away; I never hear it ring. And the volume is all the way up. It’s always a shock to find I’ve missed a call and then I hope and pray it wasn’t an emergency.

When I’m home, my television is on pretty much all the time. I find it strangely soothing to hear human voices selling merchandise, reading the latest news, or announcing new episodes of my favorite shows while I tackle the never-ending battle against the powers of dirt and cat hair. One day not too long ago, I was cleaning the bedroom when I heard the following emanating from the TV in the living room:

“I’m your penis; I’m your fire; I’m your desire.” What??

I ran to the living room in time to see a commercial for razor blades. Of course, I don’t need to tell you the commercial was using the song, “I’m Your Venus.” I chuckled to myself; Bananarama’s enunciation could have been better, so it wasn’t me.

Another day I was going through some mail sitting on the couch and a commercial came on for gluten-free opium. My head snapped up to see a family sitting down to a breakfast of gluten-free oatmeal. Ok, this one was all me.

Sometimes I have the TV tuned to music choice channels, usually Party Favorites, but sometimes I listen to some of the 80’s hits as well. Just yesterday, Corey Hart’s “I Wear My Sunglasses at Night” came on. I’ve always liked this song, but I’ve never been able to decipher what the hell Corey sings when he gets to the chorus.

“Don’t push the sky and share the light, ho ho??”

“Don’t push this guy ‘cause he’ll take a dump, oh no??”

Are you kidding me, Corey? I finally gave up and went to my computer to look up the lyrics. After all these years, I now know that the chorus is as follows:

“Don’t switch the blade on the guy in shades, oh no/“Don’t masquerade with the guy in shades, oh no…” And what in the world does he mean by that? Forget it; I don’t even want to know.

I heard All American Rejects’ “Move Along” a little while after Corey Hart’s hit. All I kept hearing was “Mow the Lawn/Mow the Lawn/Mow the Lawn.”

I’ve never been able to tolerate putting anything in my ears, like those phone earbuds; it skeeves me out no end. I shudder to think that pretty soon, if my hearing loss continues, I’ll have to be fitted with one (or two) of those “invisible” hearing aids. Oh, dear God. The thought makes my skin crawl. I’ve started to practice reading lips. I’ll sometimes mute the TV and try to see if I can tell what people are saying. Or I’ll watch a YouTube video on my computer with the speakers off to see if I can catch any of what’s being said. I’ll make out a word here and there, but I’m a miserable failure at this.

Today I heard Kaoma’s 1989 hit “Lambada” sung in its original Portuguese. What a great get-up-and-dance song this is! I thoroughly enjoyed hearing this fantastic tune after so many years, but since I don’t speak Portuguese, here’s what I kept hearing a few lines into the song:

“I’m in Curacao, why is your placenta on the floor?/Slap your ovaries, why is your placenta on the floor?”

As Emily would say, “Never mind.”