It’s something I’m sure we’ve all experienced at some point in our lives as deaf people. Whether they put their hands on their hips, roll their eyes or just let out a sigh, their frustration at having to repeat themselves for the second or third time leads to them asking that one, sarky question.
“Are you deaf?”
Now, for someone who isn’t very good at wit, humour, banter or any sort of quick-thinking comedy, this is the question to which I have a particularly sharp answer.
Simply responding by saying ‘yes’ sees their aggressive attitude turn more apologetic and I forget the whole thing.
Except this has made me wonder over the years what other people’s responses to such a question are, and whether people take offence to it. Personally, I’ve only ever seen it as troublesome, as opposed to being harmful.
I say troublesome because it creates further tension and awkwardness around the whole issue of a deaf person asking for something to be repeated.
You would have thought that such a simple request would have been widely accepted and appreciated by the hearing community by now, but remarks like this suggest we still have some way to go.
This brings me on to something else I wanted to discuss. Within my small group of friends – all with varying levels of deafness – a topic comes up from time to time which always interests me. Should you ever apologise for being deaf?
Your immediate answer, without some much-needed context, could very well be no, but what if a stranger or someone you know is having to repeat something for the third or fourth time. Is it best that you apologise for the inconvenience you are causing them?
With this being said, some might still argue that the answer is ‘no’. They may think that an apology for the frustration may imply that it was caused by their hearing loss – something which, of course, we have no control over. Saying to the other person that you’re deaf and politely asking them to repeat the statement should do the trick…
Whilst on the other hand, you have those who do say sorry in these circumstances – I am one of them. Yet, the interesting thing here is that I’m left wondering why exactly I am apologising? Is it on the grounds of politeness, or my deafness?
On most occasions, it’s the former. It often comes about when I’m on the phone. Noisy environments on the other end of the line or dodgy handsets leave me taking out my hearing aid and pressing the landline phone against my ear. Even then, I’m lucky if the service is good enough for me to hear. In these situations, apologies come in abundance.
The other is social environments. Although I’m far from your ‘typical student’ (if such a phrase means that I party more than I study), I’m always happy to meet with friends in the pub or in a coffee shop when our dissertations get a bit too stressful – even for someone that loves discussing big social issues, you can indeed have too much politics.
So instead, I seek some comic relief – aided by a bottle of lemonade and a brownie bar (something which is worryingly moresome for someone on a student budget). However, in amongst the clattering of plates and cups and boiling kettles, it’s hard to make out the joke my best friend is telling me.
“Never mind,” they say, when I fail to hear it. It’s understandable to an extent; nobody wants to have to repeat a joke more than once. After that, it loses its sparkle or its initial ‘punch’. However, has there ever been a time when a joke has been told, where there isn’t further banter afterwards? There’s no harm in repeating the joke again so nobody misses out.
This is all stuff that has been said before, but it needs to be said again because we live in an impatient world.
News, entertainment and information online are shared and consumed instantly before society moves on to the next thing. Such fast-paced communication has affected the interactions between deaf and hearing people. Where there should be patience, instead there’s frustration and annoyance at people having to repeat themselves.
We must continue to use deaf awareness events to push for patience and understanding in a hearing world.
Read more of Liam’s writing for us here.
Liam O’Dell is mildly deaf and uses hearing aids in both ears. Alongside studying for a degree in journalism, Liam enjoys presenting his own radio show, listening to music and reading one of the many books on his ’to-be-read’ list. You can find out more about Liam over at his blog: www.thelifeofathinker.
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Jo Dennison Drake
March 29, 2018
I couldn’t agree more with you Liam on this issue of people need to be more patient. In this day and age it becomes ever more important as we get accustomed to almost instant responses to our text messages, emails flying back to us instead of waiting for snail mail post etc…Tolerance is another issue that people are beginning to lack in some respects too.
One of the very reasons I finally ended up becoming separated from my husband (hearing) was his lack of patience and constant rolling of eyes which made me feel so bad for being deaf. I suffer enough from missing out on day to day conversation and repartee without having to feel really bad about being deaf. I can put up with the occasional lack of impatience with people not understanding or knowing me but for heavens sake my husband married me knowing I was severely to profoundly deaf and this happened 9 yrs after he courted me so he knew what he was in for.
I felt so inadequate and useless, I felt belittled for not knowing something as automatically as him as he did through not hearing things naturally via radio, over hearing other people’s conversations, television in the days before subtitles and still many non subtitled TV programmes even today and so on.
I was saddened by the fact that he couldn’t read my body language or my face like our girls could and instantly realise that I hadn’t understood.
He got cross with me when I couldn’t hear (not seeing) the difference between yes and no when gave him a cup of coffee or failed to give him one! He could have simply just laughed and hugged me and said I’d misheard him but he didn’t, he got cross instead.
Saying sorry for being deaf is something most of us do automatically to make the other person feel better so they are less embarrassed or less uncomfortable. It’s part of the niceties of society I guess!
Good luck Liam with your student life and all the very best with your future career.
Rosie Malezer
March 29, 2018
Jo Dennison Drake, we are two peas in a pod. Seriously, my hearing husband does exactly the same thing when I ask him a question, offer him a cuppa.
He also spends every moment browsing through Facebook on his phone when he is home instead of engaging in any sort of conversation with me. It almost makes me feel invisible, and makes me wonder why he married me in the first place.
Today, however, I was grateful at his amazing timing. My husband currently lives with his mother (we are trial-separated) and he was visiting today to take me to collect a parcel from a store on the other side of town. He texted me to tell me he would be here in 20 minutes. So I got dressed (I live in northern Finland and it is crazy-cold outside) and had to search for my sunglasses now that the sun is in the sky once again (we do not have sunrise during winter). As I pulled them from my handbag in the walk-in robe, the giant three-quarter door sized mirror came off its hinges and landed smash on my head. Luckily my empty skull broke its fall, but it then shattered and slice my hands, knee and foot. This happened just after he texted me a message to walk to the carpark (through the ice and snow). I was shaking – a real mess – so managed to step over some glass and type into Facebook *apua* (help me). I didn’t care who helped me at that point as I was covered in glass and bleeding profusely from my left hand.
My husband either saw the status message or had come to the door, but as I stood there bleeding, he tapped me on the shoulder from behind as I stared at the smashed mirror on the floor. His look of shock was immediately visible and he pointed to my left hand which was free-flowing blood. He signed to me, told me to go wash it immediately and put pressure on it. As I did that, he cleaned up most of the glass. I was shaking like a leaf (I still am shaking a little bit, but much less than 7 hours ago).
So while I get upset at him “living inside of his phone” or doing everything he can to seemingly taunt me with simple things such as not looking at me when I offer him a cup of tea or other things, it is days like today that I have never been so grateful, relieved, thankful that he was here when he was. I am now all bandaged up and don’t even want to think about what would have happened to me today if he had not been here.
Strangers, on the other hand – it took about a year before the neighbours here even bothered to acknowledge me, talk to me, wave hello to me or whatnot. Now, however, we deliver each other’s mail to each other, depending on who happens to be at the mailbox first. All know I am Deaf, but they still talk to me. I smile at them and they know I haven’t a clue what they said. My neighbour directly next door, however, actually reached out to me as a friend when her husband left her. For the first time in my life, she really communicated with me, pushing a note through the mail slot in the door to tell me he had left her and she is devastated. Me and my trusted whiteboard and pen knocked on her door, I hugged her, we sat down and she wrote a very long story which almost made me cry. I made sure she knew that I am here for her no matter what. Now we are like sisters which amazes me – she is hearing, I am Deaf, and she still flaps her lips at me. But now she does it with a smile, tries to sign little things to me like “thank you” and she bows at the same time.
Hopefully some day the audism and surdophobia ends and we Deaf will not be treated like poison by the general population, by the government, by bus drivers and more. The postal delivery lady is also trying hard, by the way – she has been learning a little bit of ASL and for the last month or two, she signs to me when she sees me. I definitely feel the curtain that separates us is beginning to fall. Inclusive actions, whether from a spouse or a stranger, make all the difference in the world.
xx
Hartmut Teuber
April 2, 2018
A couple of rejoinders I have parat:
Q Are you deaf?
A: Yes, I am, but not my ears.
That reply left the questioner thinking days and nights, though he knew I don’t hear.
Instead of saying, “I am deaf” or “I cannot hear”, I usually say, “I don’t hear.” Admittedly, the distinction between the first two and the third is highly subtle. “I cannot hear” conveys that I should hear, because it is the simple contrary of “can”, which contains the idea of perfection that I don’t have on me and that a complete human being ought to be able to hear. “I don’t hear” just conveys the simple fact of hearing inability, as a variety of being human, like being one-armed, having red hair, or a buckle teeth. I do say it both in German and English. My hearing boyhood friend finally understood the subtlety of the expression after 20 years after meeting many deaf people. The distinction between “I don’t hear” and “I cannot hear” defines in essence the Deaf Culture.
I also refrain of using the term “hearing loss” (and other audistic phrases, like “hearing rehabilitation”) in all my communications, in my speeches and writings. When I encounter someone using this term, I would say, did you see me looking for my hearing?
A German mother of a newly born baby related to me a conversation with a neighbor. He asked her first “Is the baby also deaf?” This is a sensitive question in Germany, more so than when an American or a Deaf person would ask the same question, because she predicted the neighbor’s reaction to her answer, either “That’s wonderful!” if the baby was hearing, or “Oh, that’s too bad!”, if it is deaf. She gave a brilliant retort: “It is healthy!” Deeply thinking, the neighbor walked away.
In a farewell greeting to a Deaf person, I would bid “Be Deaf” instead of “Be well”.
Hartmut
Hartmut Teuber
April 2, 2018
Liam O’Dell’s major concern with Hearing people resides in the issue of “impatience”. It is a simplification of the issue. It is true just in part. More pertinent is the audism that lends them to be less willing to adapt to Deaf people and their communication needs and accept their rights to coexist on an equal footing in the society as defined by Deaf people. It is too often the Hearing people’s expectation that the society is homogenous to contain hearing people and Deaf people are deviants, ergo to behave as pseudo-hearing beings.