Damon Clark tells us about his life experience being deaf in the USA (BSL)

I’m Damon and I’ve lived all over the US – from East to West Coast, but the longest has been either in Texas, where I was born and raised or on the East Coast.

I have almost no hearing in one ear and am classified, as of my last audiology test, severely hard of hearing on the other side. Without my hearing aid, I may hear noise, but I wouldn’t know what’s being said at all. I mostly speak, but sometimes use ASL.

I was born in the early 80s and was very premature. My stubbornness was evident even then! As far as anyone knows, this is the underlying cause of my deafness. However, in my deaf ear, I had so many ear infections, I can’t count the number of times I was in the ENT’s office.

I also had a cholesteatoma, which required two surgeries. A cholesteatoma, based on my research, is a buildup of skin cells that have turned into a non-cancerous tumor, but, if left untreated, can go to the brain. On top of all that, I’m legally blind in one eye and have lousy vision in the other.

I started school when I was about 3. I was in a deaf ed program and learned to sign ASL at the same time I learned to speak. I had no early feelings about it because I knew nothing different. As a young child, I was around other people like me when at school.

We always hear about CODAs yet I’m the opposite. My entire family is hearing. At school, I signed. At home, I spoke. My mom knows the alphabet and a few signs. My favorite snack was saltine crackers. I made sure EVERYONE knew that sign! My dad knows “I love you.”

My feelings of being different didn’t really come until I was about 12 years old. Until then, I was just a kid that had an interpreter and both hearing and deaf friends.

I had deaf friends and ASL throughout primary school and I had an auditory trainer too. Most of my teachers had a pack of my hearing aid batteries in their desks. There was a lot of support yet these schools were 30 minutes from my home.

My parents both worked, so the decision was made at the end of 6th grade to mainstream me at the local school. I was excited and terrified. I’d wanted to go to school closer to home for years, but, I didn’t want to leave my deaf friends and the support that I had there.

It was hard when I was completely mainstreamed. I was offered an interpreter however, I said no because I would have been the only person with one. I really didn’t want someone following me around.

I knew it was going to be hard enough being the kid that “talked funny.” I was lucky enough that most of these kids knew me already because I played soccer and basketball and because of my older brother so I didn’t go in completely blindsided, so to speak (yes, pun intended!)

I tried to fit in. During my first 2 years (7th and 8th grades – 12 to 13 years old) I did athletics and band. I know, deaf guy in band! I had a very patient band director who taught me so, later, when I was in high school, it was shocking that I was as good as I was. I wasn’t bad and I even won several competitions.

A couple of years ago, I got in touch with this director and thanked him for all he had taught me. He told me that I’d taught him just as much and he didn’t have a single student that didn’t know my story and he used my techniques of feeling the music to teach them.

I also feel thankful towards speech therapy because feeling the sounds was how I learned to talk. That and tongue twisters. Those, especially the ones for “S” still make me cringe.

I would say that, on the outside, my mainstream experience was almost entirely normal and I “passed” as a hearing student 99% of the time. What most people were not realizing was that, really, I faked hearing. Sure, I heard well enough to get along, but most of it, I’d get every third word or so and learned how to fill in the blanks.

No one signed. I missed ASL terribly. But I never asked for an interpreter. I didn’t want to be more different than I already was.

I still had speech therapy in 7th and 8th grade. I still had the resources classroom (for personal tutoring) when I needed help. Unbeknownst to me for quite some time, I had teachers looking out for me.

I found that out in 8th grade when my science teacher had me stay after class. She’d realized that she’d been walking all around the classroom while lecturing, which meant I was turning all around trying to find her. She apologized, saying she knew better and had forgotten because I did so well at hearing. She stayed in one place after that!

As I got older and got more used to not having all of the same support, I slowly became more comfortable. I still missed ASL though.

I graduated with what is considered an honors diploma. The only difference was taking dual-credit college courses (which I had already planned to do and did for 2 years) and an extra year of Spanish.

Yes, you read that right. I took 3 years of Spanish! I barely passed. I told my parents I thought I could suffer through one more year of Spanish. If it hadn’t been for one of my older brother’s friends, I probably would have failed that year.

So, my experiences were very different in both schools. I never stopped missing my deaf culture, but I was in a hearing world and adapted.

I am not sorry I was mainstreamed because I had opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. In some ways, it was a win-win because I was closer to home and had more opportunities. In some ways, it was a lose-lose because I lost an entire world that I felt comfortable in.

However for many people around here, because I have speech and speak more than I sign, I’m ‘too hearing.’ Yet for the hearing people, because I miss so much and have no backspeech, I’m too deaf.

For me the biggest stereotypes about deafness would be; ‘I’m deaf, therefore I must be stupid’ and ‘ I’m deaf, therefore I must not be able to speak’ or ‘ I sign, therefore I must be talking about you.’

In the future I would like to see more acceptance for those like me who are in the middle identity wise – not fully deaf, but not hearing either.

Written by Damon Clark
Image courtesy of i-stock photos.