Teresa Garratty: A teachable moment

Self indulgent article inbound!

(As if all of mine aren’t self indulgent!)

But bear with me, there’s a teachable moment towards the end.

Due to my life experience, location and God awful social skills I rarely ever spend time with any deaf people.

If I do ever feel the urge to venture outside my cave, I’m surrounded by hearies all the time and cope with operating on some kind of “sub-par hearing person” level. The technical term for this, I believe, is “blagging”. I blag it.

However, there are a few rare occasions when the stars align and I develop large enough lady balls to delve into a pretty hardcore deaf event. Something like a deaf film festival or working at a deaf wedding etc. and it becomes painfully obvious that I don’t really fit in there any more than I do with the hearies. I literally fall smack bang in the middle.

I recently attended a week-long workshop for developing deaf actors (as an observing director) and this was by far the MOST deafest thing I have ever done.

True to form, I was the oddest one out. I was speaking like a hearie and signing like a vocabulary stunted amoeba in slow motion.

I’m pretty sure for some parts, the interpreters were only there for my lip reading benefit, as everyone else could get along just fine. It was like some kind of backwards Black Mirror episode…

If I’m being honest, during the build up I was dreading it. My game plan was to attend the workshop by day and then retreat to the hotel room with my kindle by night.

One small problem though…there is no escape from socialising with actors. They will hunt you, they will find you and when they do, they will be incredibly entertaining. It’s in their nature.

Usually, at this point the blood would drain from my face and I’d break into a cold sweat but for some reason things were a little different this time.

Maybe it’s because I had a few acquaintances there or maybe it was because creative people can be a little more open minded, but for once in my brief deaf life (I’m only 14 in deaf years by the way!) I felt relatively relaxed and at times…dare I say…confident?!

Nothing had really changed, my attempts at signing were still **** and I’m sure people noticed/laughed amongst themselves about it but I was still managing to get to know people on a personal level, so it didn’t really matter. I guess I felt included and not so different for a change.

I wish that feeling had lasted.

But it didn’t and soon enough things were back to “normal” and I was kind of left outside, gazing into a fish bowl…full of fish that are a lot deafer than me.

Again, the exact reason for this wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t the fault of anyone there, except perhaps maybe mine? I was extremely tired. On top of lip reading, following other people’s BSL, making notes on some mind blowing acting techniques and trying my best to make a semi coherent joke now and then, my introvert batteries went flat.

I wasn’t really interacting any more but I don’t think anyone minded.

Communicating is a two way street, so if I’m finding it hard, that means I’m probably making it hard for the other person. Maybe we were all tired? But that doesn’t excuse what happened next…

Just as we were preparing to leave, one of my “fellow” deafies insisted that I listen out for people’s footsteps…because I was a hearing person…because I’m a speaker…and I lip read.

I only had just about enough energy to process what he was signing before I realised I was offended and by that time he’d decided to mock covering his mouth while speaking at me. I’m not usually a complete push over but I was so physically and emotionally defeated that I just stood there like a prat while others looked on in pity.

And so I went back home, into my own little bubble where the only really “deaf thing” I do is have the subtitles on my TV and I wondered….

I’m never going to be a “proper” deaf person (I know, I don’t know wtf that means either), it’s just not possible. It’s not the life I’ve had. I can’t change the fact that I wasn’t born deaf, so I’m always going to be different wherever I go.

 

But then I had a power nap.

And I’ve decided to try and focus on the positives. For whatever reason, I was lucky enough to be invited to an extremely valuable workshop, I met some incredibly talented people and even though I might have made some enemies, I think I managed to gain a friend or two!

So for now, I think I most certainly WILL continue to bother and who knows? Maybe things will be just that little bit easier when I’m 15 (deaf) years old!*

*DISCLAIMER: I’m actually incredibly old and have four grey hairs…and counting…

Read more of Teresa’s posts (with cartoons!) by clicking here.

Teresa is a freelance film maker, photographer and full time cynic. At school, she was voted “Most likely to end up in a lunatic asylum”, a fate which has thus far been avoided. Her pet hates are telephones, intercoms and all living things. Follow her on Twitter as @TGarratty