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ARE HARD-OF-HEARING (HH) MEN WELCOMED AT DEAF/HH NWTA?
This was a question proposed to me some months ago by the steering committee for the upcoming 2nd Deaf/HH NWTA weekend to be held November 9-11, 2008 at The Land of Our Grandfathers hosted by the Houston MKP Community. I will share my experience of having been around hard-of-hearing people the past several years since I have been doing my own growth work of accepting my own deafness and learning sign language to bridge the gap of the hearing world and the deaf world in my personal life.
Twenty five years ago this past Spring (1982) it came to my awareness that I was “deaf” and not “sick.” The last words I heard when I was exposed with the measles as a young boy at the age of two were, “You are sick, stay in bed.” I had not broken out with the red spots but I was in the contagious state of the measles. Thus, I was sick. As the deafness came on from the burning fever that accompanied the measles, in the mind of the little boy, I made it about being sick and not about being deaf. So, when I was 25 years old, the awareness came to me, for all these years on the subconscious level that I had thought of myself being sick and not deaf. And now on the conscious level, I am deaf and not sick.
Ever since then, I have been coming to grips with my deafness. At that time I was learning sign language that I took at TVI in downtown St. Paul, MN. My first instructor was a deaf man. There was no voice spoken in the first segment of my classes I took.
Since that time, I have reflected much about my hard-of-hearing status and my experience of being around other hard-of-hearing people. I remember sitting in a therapy group for Hard-Of-Hearing people. In one sense, I related much of what was being shared in the circle. But in another sense, I knew that I had a different path. All of the people in the circle had most of their hearing up into their middle adulthood… late 40’s to early 50’s. The number one thing that these people wanted was “to have normal hearing” so they could be in the crowds and noisy places again. And because of their limitations to hear, they found themselves staying home more and going into isolation feeling depressed and not really knowing how to deal with their hearing loss.
Since then, I have come to notice that people who wear hearing aids don’t see themselves associated with the Deaf World. They grew up in the Hearing World and considered themselves as Hearing People. For a hard-of-hearing person to associate him/herself to the Deaf World would mean the hearing was almost gone, hard to lip-read and depend on the hearing aids and beginning to learn sign language.
My observation has been that most people see it as an “EITHER/OR” World and not as a “BOTH/AND” World. Many Hard-Of-Hearing people want their hearing to be like it was for them as in the Normal Hearing World where they can distinguish the direction of where the sound is coming from and to be able to hear in the crowd with no difficulty.
In my experience of reading and reflecting on my deafness and wearing hearing aids, I have come to be aware that having my ears plugged up all the time is like having a head cold 24/7. I hear everything in my head. My voice sounds louder with the hearing aids in than when I would take them out. I used to wear eyeglasses. I remember when I would touch my eyeglasses frame; I could hear my hand touching the glasses. The temples of the eyeglasses set on my ears next to the hearing aids. It was like someone was thumping the microphone to see if it was working properly. Now I have been wearing contacts for over 26 years. I no longer have to “listen to the thumping” because I don’t wear the eyeglasses any more.
I usually eat fast. I am one of the first ones to finish my meal at the table with friends because while I am eating, I can’t hear much of what is being spoken around the table. With the ears plugged up, I hear everything in my head. Once I had a hearing man say to me, “You only want to hear what you want to hear. It’s called ‘selective hearing.’” I told him that was not true. He had spoken to me while we were eating. I continued on with my meal, I was eating a lettuce salad. As I was munching on my next bite, he spoke to me again and this time I did not hear him. It was then that I became aware that I cannot hear people speak to me when I am crunching on a lettuce salad or potato chips or peanuts. I hear the crunching going on in my head. Again, that’s why I eat fast. So, I can hear without interruptions from my own eating!
Another thing that is annoying about wearing hearing aids is being outside with the wind blowing. It sounds like someone is blowing in the microphone to see if it is working properly. The microphone on the hearing aids picks up the wind sound. It can be a nuisance when the wind is louder in the hearing aid than the human voice I am trying to listen to. If I don’t lip-read well, then it can almost be impossible to hear outside when it’s a windy day. I have been known to switch sides with a friend while walking down the sidewalk to cut the wind sound in the hearing aids.
I share these few experiences to illustrate what a hard of hearing person may have to go through. Many hard of hearing people can’t put into words the frustrations of what it is like not to have “normal” hearing and wishing that the hearing aid would “cure” the struggle.
So, are hard-of-hearing men accepted at a Deaf/HH NWTA? Yes, the staff will accept them at the weekend but I don’t believe that man will be ready to accept this experience if he has not accepted his own limitations of being deaf in his own limitations of being in the hearing world.
I have come to accept that I don’t go to movie theaters any more because I depend so much on closed caption to catch all the words spoken in the movie. Going to a movie theater can be a source of frustration for me and I don’t feel good about myself when I come out of the theater.
When I had received my first decoder for the television on my 32nd birthday (1988); I was totally blown away of how much I had missed while watching any television shows. I remember back then knowing why people loved to watch MASH. Once I got the closed caption device, I could understand all the one liner and puns in the television show of MASH. With the closed caption, I was able to keep up with the banter and the interruptions of the laughter in the show. It was shortly after that when MASH was discontinued on television.
Since then I have enjoyed CHEERS, FRAZIER and SEINFELD. I don’t watch much television these days. If I do, I use it for the DVD movies I get with closed caption.
I wonder how many hard-of-hearing people make good use of the closed caption on their television. Or do they just turn up the volume and their loved ones have to put up with the loud volume?
If there were a group of hard-of-hearing men present on the weekend, it would be made known to consciously face them so they could lip-read who was speaking. Sometimes a show of a hand raised would be beneficial to alert the hard-of-hearing men who was about to speak.
Being Hard-of-Hearing is like looking at a page in a coloring book. There are only black lines on a blank page of paper. To hear the sounds around, the hard-of-hearing person hears but doesn’t know which direction the sound is coming from. I imagine that normal hearing is 3-dimensional like a piece of sculpture that can be seen from all sides. But the hearing of a Hard-of-Hearing person is 2-dimensional. It is just there but no sense of direction. With the help of a hearing aid, the sound just comes in but no sense of softness or loudness of sound being far or nearby.
Until a Hard-of-Hearing man comes to some acceptance of his own deafness, he will not be okay with making the NWTA with other deaf men.
This is my take on the question that was asked of me.
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