In the end, the hearing aids in "Hearing Aids" by Clyde Edgerton are donated to the reader (O.Henry 2025)

The sense of sight is considered so central that seeing is often equated with understanding. To say "I see" means "I understand." Jesus used seeing as a metaphor for spiritual comprehension. You'd think glasses, which are for people who have trouble seeing, would be a symbol of some kind of inability to perceive on a deeper level, but I can rattle a few examples off the top of my head of glasses being used in a narrative to show that someone sees exceedingly well: the eyes on the billboard in Great Gatsby, the eyeglasses worn by the killer in "A Good Man is Hard to Find," and the sunglasses worn by Boss Godfrey in the movie Cool Hand Luke. I guess that since glasses give one good sight, it's understandable to use them in this way.

So what about hearing aids? Well, hearing may not be the central sense in our language that seeing is, but it's close. If you're struggling to understand someone, and you listen to them for a long time, and it finally makes sense, you can say, "I hear you now" to mean, "I finally get it." And Jesus, who spread his message orally rather than through the printed word, used hearing nearly as much as seeing to represent true insight, e.g. "Let those that have ears hear."

Not T.J. Eckleburg-level ominous, maybe

So I think we're justified to take the hearing aids that the narrator in the story by that name wants to donate as a symbol of more than just little gadgets that make your ears work better. The narrator, near the end of his life, is trying to figure out whom to leave the hearing aids to. They're expensive, after all, and it's a pain not being able to hear, so somebody should have them. But it's more than that. The narrator is dying, and he's trying, in the short pages of this very short story, to explain what has been confusing him throughout his whole life. He is trying to be heard.

Half of the story involves digressions into all of the things that upset the narrator, and these digressions are involved enough they could be seen as spinning out or as crazed diatribes. There's the recriminations of himself for his inability to stick to things in life or complaints about the lack of people who made him stick to things. There's the litany of objects in history that used to be commonplace but which were later replaced by better versions. There's the way the world comes at us too fast, and the lack of sensible organizations that might do something like find fitting homes for all the perfectly serviceable hearing aids in the world. 

These thoughts aren't just the crazed rants of a bitter old man, though. They're his attempt to leave his most important insights into life, and he's running out of time. He may or may not be on his way to throw himself in front of the fast-moving train that comes in the afternoon, but even if he isn't, the train is a pretty obvious metaphor for death, as the narrator is about to leave the station for the final time. These final thoughts are coming out jumbled together, but the pieces are all there for those with ears to hear. 

History comes at you fast, and it will leave your head spinning. You'll end up wishing you'd stuck to something. Encouragement to stick to something might be lacking, but you should stick to it, anyway. The story is itself that encouragement. It doesn't need to be a longer story, because history itself goes by in a blink just like the story does.