Video games and noise

What is it with video games and boys that they have to play them at the highest volume possible? No matter how many times I ask my youngest son today to turn it down it always ends up back at an ear splitting volume. It's not like he's able to go online to talk to his friends and needs it loud to hear them (although how either boy can hear what their friends say over the volume of the TV is beyond me) as the oldest one took the memory card of the youngest one home and that has his profile on it. Without the memory card the youngest one can't use X-box live to talk to anyone. That's fine with me but why does he have to have the volume so loud I can hear it over the music I'm blasting in my I-Pod? I use the I-Pod to block out the noise of the TV when the boys are here. Sometimes I use the music program, Pandora, on the Nook to drowned out the noise of the video games. They say they can't hear it but if I'm talking on the phone in a very quiet voice (whispering) they can hear every word I say and comment on it. I don't do that to them when they are talking to their friends on line. (at least not much)

One of my best friends is here. He's sleeping, although I don't know how through all this noise. He came down yesterday and brought lobster's for dinner. That was nice. We try to do that once a year. When ever the lobsters are on sale either near where he lives or here at Market Basket down the street.

Around 4 PM yesterday afternoon my oldest son called and said he wasn't coming over. Apparently his father had an incident at work with is heart. I just talked to him and his sister told me he would be home either today or tomorrow so I guess what happened wasn't that bad. His father has had to have 2 angioplasty and a multiple bypass surgery. He has a history of heart problems and I guess yesterday he passed out and they had to give him his nitroglycerin to help bring him around. By the time the ambulance got there he was doing much better but they still took him to the hospital and admitted him. He works in Connecticut now so they took him to a hospital near his work down there. I was afraid for him because he isn't always forthcoming about how bad things are and even though my son had said his dad called and said it wasn't bad I was worried that he was again down playing how bad things were. The last time he was hospitalized it wasn't till I talked to his doctor before I found out how bad things were. There was a one in three chance he could have died. I'm happy that things aren't that bad and he'll be home soon. That means though he's probably going to be out of work for a while and that's going to put a financial strain on him. He was just now getting things back in order financially. When his youngest daughter and her ex-husband left the house they lived in together they left him in a bad state financially. They hadn't been paying their part of the bills for quite a while and my son's father was trying to do it all himself. Now he's going to be back in that boat again because he can't work. I wish there was something I could do for him but he won't let me.

I asked my youngest son to turn the TV down 5 minutes ago and then watched him turn it back up one minute later. I know he doesn't have a hearing loss. It must be selective hearing. All kid's between the age of 7 and 19 have it. Most adults have it as well. They only hear what they want to. That's fine as long as it doesn't desturb the people around them like the TV is doing now for me. I have turned the volume up as loud as I can stand on my I-Pod. If I turn it up any louder I'm going to blow my ear drums out. That may be a way to get out of hearing the TV when the kids are playing so maybe I'll do that. It would mean though that I won't be able to hear my TV shows so there are drawbacks to doing that. I don't know what to do.
Any suggestions?