I Fill This Small Space: The Writings of a Deaf Activist

A Talk Before Parents

135 A Talk Before Parents On seven different occasions this year I have been invited to talk to various groups, mostly to parents of deaf children. The following talk was delivered at a PTCA panel meeting at the California School for the Deaf, Riverside: Anyone who was associated with me, after I became deaf at the age of five from mastoiditis, would have thought that Dennis the Menace was an angel. I took out my frustrations at being deaf by thrusting my first through a pane of glass, by shooing customers out of my father’s bakery, by sitting on a wedding cake he had just made, and by bullying weaker members of my class at the Lexington School for the Deaf located in New York City. An older deaf person at this school described me as a chicken still jumping around after its head had been chopped off. She meant I was jumping around, talking to anyone in sight, acting as if I still could hear. Even a child soon learns the hard realities of life. Home from school, I tried to act just like any other kid, but I soon found out that talking to and trying to understand what others were saying were two different things. Children and adolescents are not as patient or understanding as adults (at least, some adults) and I soon found myself with a brand new basketball in my hands and no one to play with. Human beings are a highly adaptable species (except when they appear in divorce court) and since we deaf belonged to the human race we learned that the best thing to do was to spend a weekend at a deaf friend’s house—of the same sex, of course. My parents and two brothers were all heart, smothering me in love. They never laid a finger on me (my wife sometimes wishes it were otherwise ) even when I sat on that wedding cake. My parents would repeat a word 10 times before I finally understood. It often left us emotionally exhausted and, without thinking of it or meaning to, the framework of communication within which we moved tended to be restricted to such The Deaf American (May 1969) 136 essentials as: It is time to eat; we are going out and will be back, be good, etc. A visit to relatives involved group dynamics that left a deaf person out in the cold. When I asked what they were talking about, “Nothing important,” was their answer. I soon learned to curl myself up in a corner with a book. One of my brothers could fingerspell a little and he would tell me in a few words what a two-hour movie was all about. I would attend theatres where foreign films were being shown because they had English captions but the women in those films were often undressing and it was difficult to keep my eyes on them and the captions at the same time. Now that American films are being captioned for the deaf I do not understand how, in my salad days, I ever sat still for three or four hours at a movie house. Let me tell you what deafness is. Deafness is continuing to use the vacuum cleaner when the plug has been jerked out of its socket: being singled out for a chat by talkative persons although there are hundreds around you who can hear: nodding, making faces, and pretending you understand instead of telling the person he might as well be talking in Swahili; smiling when the person is telling you about his wife who has just died and contorting your face into a sad expression when you are told the funniest joke known to man. Deafness is wondering if the persons over there are talking about you and laughing at you; wondering what you would do if you were in a bank at the exact moment it was being robbed by those wearing face masks not exactly conducive to lipreading. Son Warner, brother Lenny, son-in-law Sandy. 137 Deafness is, if you are prelingually deaf, not knowing the meaning of such common words as “Attaboy,” “Beware”; not being familiar with a prehippie era saying such as: “As American as apple pie”; not being able to write a grammatically correct sentence; having minds dulled by years of communication starvation. Deafness is thanking God for sensible parents who send...