What? Say again. Como? Huh?
Those words sound very casual. They can be irritating. They can slow down good conversation. They are, briefly, sort of a pain. But to a hearing impaired person they are often the lifeline to communication.
The old oft repeated Indian saying, which may or may not have originated with an Indian, says that you can never understand a person until you have walked a mile in his/her moccasins. This is true of physical handicaps. I do not really understand or write with any authority about blindness or crippling arthritis or the pain of parents of handicapped children. But I do know what it is to have to say "what" a dozen times during a serious conversation, and to write off completely many a casual one. I am an expert at spending the first few minutes of a group discussion figuring out who or what the people are talking about. With luck I can do it. The trick is to look intelligent and comprehending while the thought process is grinding along.
I wish I had a nickel for every time I have heard a partially deaf person over 50 say, "I don't need hearing aids. They are for old people and I am not old"
Christopher is one of my very good friends. He has a hearing impairment and we discuss our mutual problem quite a bit.
We compare notes on hearing aids and ear molds and the kinds of verbal things we both miss out on because we can't hear people's voices accurately. We laugh at each other because even we, who know better, sometimes forget to look directly at each other when we talk. He is not worried about being thought old. He is 12.
What he worries about is being picked on by his peers because he wears hearing aids. He worries about people thinking he is dumb when he isn't. He worries about what he will do when he is grown. These are not problems caused by lack of hearing in itself. With strong support from his family and the school system, he is coping very well with that. Rather they are caused by societal attitudes and prejudices and lack of patience and understanding sometimes by those around him, but at 12 he is just beginning to understand that. He is now able to say, "This is not my problem. It is theirs." and believe it most of the time.
On the other hand, I don't care if people know about my problem. After all, there is no way they cannot know. If they care about me they are patient and helpful. If they don't, it really doesn't matter. Probably a lot of what I miss I am better off not knowing.
But what we share, Christopher and I, is the constant frustration of not knowing just exactly what is going on around us, of being just a few degrees off balance. And we both dread saying something incredibly foolish because we missed what came before. It is terribly embarrassing to realize that you have asked a question that has just been answered. The hearing impaired person learns early on that silence is often better than the appearance of stupidity. I have learned to live with it pretty comfortably, but at 12 it makes a scary world.
If I had a magic wand I would give everyone five sharp senses. The loss of any one is tragic. But my friend, the one who interprets for me with such great patience and understanding, and who is also Christopher's mother, likes to quote Helen Keller's belief, that the blind lose things. The deaf lose people.
Hearing impairment is not a disgrace. It is not an admission of aging. It is a physical handicap that is no fun to live with at any age. But I think it is time to make it socially acceptable. What was that you said?