Day by Day: The Chronicles of a Hard of Hearing Reporter

Handling Insensitive Questions and Changing One’s Attitude

40  Handling Insensitive Questions and Changing One’s Attitude As a deaf or hard of hearingperson, have other people ever asked such an insolent question that it totally amazes you as to the amount of ignorance and misunderstanding it conveys? Our first reaction might be to think that it is possible that we have misunderstood the question or misread its meaning. It is easy for us as deaf or hard of hearing people to blame ourselves, thinking, “They couldn’t have said that.” Or you might think to yourself, “What did I do to cause them to think in such a way that they would even ask such a question?” I am careful how I word my own remarks because I have, in fact, been the recipient of many insensitive comments or questions over the years. If I tell someone, “Oh, you got your hair cut!” and say Handling Insensitive Questions 41 nothing more, I then recoil at the thought that my comment might be negatively misconstrued, and quickly go on to add, “And it looks good.” I’m not referring to people who ask questions like, “When is the baby due?” and you’re not pregnant. I’m talking about people who unwittingly say, “What do you mean you can’t hear me? Are you deaf?” or, my least favorite, “Gee, I wish I could turn off the noise once in awhile. It must be nice.” No, it is not nice. It’s difficult living in a hearing world, in which noise drowns out vocal clarity. It is annoying for us when background noise, such as a soft drink machine’s humming or copier noise, means that we have to tell someone, “I can’t hear you.” But in my senior year of high school, my English teacher, Ms. Boyd, asked us if you had to choose, would you rather lose your hearing or your vision? This question has never left my mind and inspired the following column. Some Difficult Questions Should Never Be Asked “If you had to choose, would you rather lose your hearing or your vision ?” What a question! I was  years old and a high school senior, when our English teacher posed this question to our class. I wanted to ignore it, but she wanted an answer. I thought about it. I had just “starred” in our senior musical. I loved to sing and listen to music. Music is probably the reason I survived high school. She looked at me and said, “Well, we all know Liz that you would choose to lose your vision. You would then still be able to hear music.” Had she read my mind? No. Now I am about the same age she was then and I wonder if I would pose that question to anyone. I know people with perfect vision and low or no vision, people who hear everything, and those who have hearing losses that range from mildly hard of hearing to deaf. I know people who power walk and run marathons and others who struggle to place one foot in front of the other. Their own kind of daily marathon. There are people who cannot lean over due to back injury and gymnasts who jump and bend in midair. Well, you could add your own struggle or triumph here couldn’t you? Would you appreciate this question? Again, I think not. With maturity, I have learned what I wish I could tactfully have said to my teacher and probably not gotten into trouble for having said it. I would say that I’d choose not to lose either sense and that I felt that the question and accompanying comment were insensitive. How could any one loss be worse or better than another? But her question has stayed with me some  years later. As my hearing gradually waned over the years, I often wondered why. See, I agreed with the teacher when she said I would not want to lose my hearing. But I did lose it. So now what do I do? The teacher didn’t waste time discussing what we’d do if we lost one or the other sense I had to ask new questions. Find new ways to cope. Make new friends who understood my situation. It took time and energy. I often fell back, gave up, and had to regroup. Since my hearing declined slowly, I had years...