I’M ABOUT HALF DEAF IF YOU COUNT THE TINNITUS IN MY GOOD EAR. My bad ear is too weak for off-the-shelf hearing aids, and the custom-fit models haven’t been working out for the last 30 years, in only three or four of which I’ve been actively trying to do something about it.

I’ve been telling myself for 42 years, since my ear blew out at 18, that not being able to hear half the chatter that goes on around me is not so bad. A lot of what we all say day to day is idle babble anyhow. I should know, I’ve made a living at it.

As I wrote last week, I’ve developed the habit of avoiding conversations in noisy environments because it’s too frustrating to follow every word, I’ve grown weary of saying “Eh?” all the time, and I don’t like people yelling into my only ear. It’s like a Charlie Brown cartoon for me out there. Voices are wah wah.

I surely don’t mind the private time. I’m perfectly content to watch others gab away as I drift into my own daydreams. A lot of columns come out of those times.

I do have concern that others might think me aloof. “Hey, what’s with this guy? Too good to talk to us? I tried to talk to him earlier and he blew me off. He just kept nodding.”

I’ve considered a small text tattoo inside my bum ear that reads, “Please use other side.” Perhaps I’ll design a T-shirt that reads, “Don’t talk to me unless you’re Gilbert Gottfried.” Jokes like that have gotten me by all these years.

Lately, however, I’m noticing that my partial deafness is impacting me in a more significant way. I’m discovering that it’s hard to make new friends. Where else do we meet new people but in social environments? All that idle chatter between people that I’ve been shrugging off all these years has been bonding my friends as better friends and binding them to new friends, and leaving me out as the quiet guy in the corner.

I don’t get to know new people at a party. They don’t get to know me, unless they read the paper. We’ll come home from a party and Susan will not only know all the new guests by name, but the ages of their children and what they do for a living. I’ll comment on the art.

When I told my friend Deb Kittrell that I was half deaf and doing nothing about it, she began kicking me in the shins and smacking me on my head. She’s an advice nurse, and her advice was quite clear. She’s threatened to flick my nose and my earlobes if I don’t move fast enough to get this done.

The whole story goes like this. It all circles around Chris’s Club in Vallejo, our favorite live blues nightclub. They have regular weeknight events for older blues lovers, like open-mic Monday. Folks in our age bracket and thereabouts come down and dance.

Susan and I dig that scene. So do Deb and Carl, our friends. We like the dancing, the warm crowd, and you never know who’s going to show up on stage. Amazing talent rolls through that place. The young crowd takes over on the weekends and we stay home.

Now, I’ve been going to Chris’s Club, pre-Kittrell, for 10 years with Gino. We’d go on Mondays and Thursdays and see the same faces year after year. I know a lot of faces.

A few years later, on meeting the Kittrells, who moved down from Alaska, we invited them to come with us. Deb took to the place instantly. Within a few months, she knew everyone there. She knew their names, their birthdays, their favorite musicians. The band welcomes her over the microphone when she comes in. They call her “Doctor Love.”

Once we find a seat, which is hard sometimes, I usually remain stationary. I can hear the music splendidly, but small talk is beyond me. Deb is up and gone half the time. I’ll spot her over by the pool table admiring someone’s hat, or plopped on a stool lost in conversation with a regular who is also a nurse. She collects phone numbers and texts and ends up going to other musical events in the Bay Area I’ve never heard of.

One evening driving home, I commented, “How is it that I’ve been going to the Chris Club for ten years, and you go there for ten months, and you know more people better that I ever have?”

She said in the simplest and truest way possible. “I talk to them.”

“Ah, see, that’s where you have me. I can’t actually talk to the other patrons. I can only wave, nod, shake hands, and say, ‘How’s it going?’”

That’s when she reached over the seat and began swatting at me. “What are you doing to yourself? You’re going to retire and die a lonely old man. People will call you Old Menu Reader. Get over to Kaiser and get yourself a hearing aid, or I swear I’ll start flicking that bad ear of yours until it’s so swollen and sore you’ll have to go in and have it surgically removed.”

OK, she didn’t actually say it all in precisely those words, but I believe she’d sign off on my interpretation.

So. There, see, Deb. I’m doing it. I’ve got an appointment. Stop poking me.

Steve Gibbs teaches at Benicia High School and has written a column for The Herald since 1985.