Like your mom always said -- that loud rock music will ruin your hearing! Well, she was right.

A story in today's New York Times (in the fashion section, no less!) confirms your mom's warning. As the first generation to grow up on rock and roll, people between the ages of 45 and 60 are having hearing problems at an earlier age than the generations that went before them. Some of it is due to our increasingly noisy world, but some of it is also due prolonged exposure to loud rock music.

Why, you ask, was this in the fashion section, rather than the health or even technology section of the paper? Well, it seems that most "age phobic" yet style conscious Baby Boomers are reluctant to get any kind of hearing aid because they don't like the look of them. They regard them as a sign of aging, and no respectable Baby Boomer will ever admit THAT!

Do your kids complain that your TV is too loud? Are "Huh?" and "What?" the most common expressions of your vocabulary? Do you lose track of the conversation at dinner in a busy restaurant? Don't worry -- you haven't become your parents; you've just been a rock fan for too long.

I think I heard a knock at the door . . . or did I?