"You know, I haven't heard one word you've said to me," he confessed.

It was that incident several years ago that convinced Arthur Schmidt he had a serious hearing problem.

By then, the evidence had been mounting for some time. At work, he struggled to make out what customers were saying on the other end of the telephone, even after he switched to an amplified receiver. At home, he had to jack up the volume on the TV set so high Evelyn worried the sound was damaging her ears.

Being in his mid-50s, he thought he was still too young for a hearing aid. But a hearing test administered by Neptune audiologist Joni DelSordo indicated otherwise. In fact, the test showed Schmidt needed a hearing aid in each ear.

These days, DelSordo is seeing more and more patients who, like Schmidt, a 58-year-old Jackson resident, belong to the baby-boom generation.

"The boomers are ahead of schedule when it comes to hearing loss," said DelSordo, supervisor of audiology at Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune. "They're showing symptoms of hearing loss in their 40s and 50s, whereas usually symptoms don't show up until the 60s."

DelSordo, who is a boomer herself, thinks Americans' penchant for loud music and the popularity of devices like the iPod are among the factors contributing to the earlier onset of hearing loss. She warns patients with early symptoms of hearing loss to turn down the volume or risk further damage, but some people, she said, "don't want to hear what we have to say."

Schmidt, for one, has led a loud life.

As a younger man, he worked in a can factory before he entered the Army. Trained as an equipment mechanic, he wound up serving in Vietnam as a military policeman and was stationed in Saigon near a battery of howitzers.

After the Army, Schmidt returned to the can factory for a while, then he got a job as an equipment mechanic working with loud engines. His current workplace — he works as a shipping and receiving clerk for a company that sells and services John Deere construction equipment — is less cacophonous, but by now the damage is done.

His hearing aids have made a world of difference, and Schmidt said he's not the least bit uncomfortable about wearing them.

"If you're not really looking for mine, you wouldn't know I had one," he said, referring to their discreet wireless design. People have told him that his speaking voice has dropped in volume, too.

The hearing aids have made life easier for his wife, also.

When they go see a movie, she said, "He's not asking me all the time, "What'd they say? What'd they say?' "

"I give him a lot of credit," Evelyn Schmidt said. "It was like, "OK, I've got this problem,' and he went and got it taken care of."

By Shannon Mullen