I look for hearing loss memes to post on our work Facebook page. Some are funny, some are true and some are way off base. Let’s take a look at memes.
This happens all the time with people who have hearing loss and there’s a variety of reasons. We can sense the other person’s agitation and we still didn’t hear it so we nod and let it go. Or someone is in deep denial still and afraid to admit they can’t hear.
SayWhatClub (SWC) is pleased to welcome guest writer and SWCer Elaine Procida who shares the story of her childhood hearing loss and a special someone who helped return to her what she feared was lost forever.
By Elaine Procida
When I was four years old, I seemed to have a lot going for me. A happy, well adjusted child with a love for people and learning, I had been enrolled in pre-school where I quickly became the teacher’s pet. But I was totally unaware that, even while I was feeling so happy, that something had happened that would soon change my life.
My preschool teacher noticed that when she called me I sometimes did not respond. She asked my mother if there was anything wrong with my hearing, but my mother had not noticed the problem that was developing. By the time I was in first grade, my personality was already showing the effects of the invisible disability which had not yet been diagnosed. I began to realize I was different from the other children but did not understand how or why.
No longer a “happy child.” I felt confused and nervous.
A hearing test at that time revealed that I had a severe hearing loss, and so I started my “non-school” years. Mostly ignored by teachers and students, angry and confused, I felt happy only when I could escape to the books I loved to read. I educated myself by reading which helped to compensate for the lessons I did not hear. Back in the 1950’s when I was in school, special help for the hard of hearing child was largely nonexistent. The few services they did provide, such as having a special desk for me placed in front of the room, only served to reinforce my feelings that I was different and somehow inferior. No one ever sat down and just talked to me about my hearing loss and what I could expect.
I remember many painful experiences but I will mention just one as an example.
We were having a special day in school where we were permitted to bring a favorite toy to class. A class-mate had a large doll. Because my desk was larger than the others she asked if I would switch with her for the day so she would have more room to keep her doll on it. I was delighted that someone thought I had something desirable, and was happy to let her use it. We approached the teacher and asked for permission. I can still
remember the look on the teacher’s face. Ignoring me, she turned to the other girl and said crossly, “You sit at your own desk! There is nothing wrong with your ears.” I turned away with tears in my eyes and what should have been a happy day turned into another miserable one.
The school always divided each class into three groups. The slowest, average, and smartest. Even with my hearing loss, I never failed a test and was always seated with the average students. But I wanted so badly to be with the best – feeling somehow that was where I belonged.
As I approached my last year of elementary school, I had no reason to believe it would be any better than the previous years. Rather, I had good reason to fear it would be worse! The teacher we were assigned for sixth grade had a reputation for being strict and harsh. Along with every other student assigned to Miss Singer’s class, I feared her. She was already past retirement age, and we were all hoping she would retire before we had her but, to our dismay, she decided to stay another year.
After a few weeks in Miss Singer’s class, I found, to my surprise, that I was much happier there than I had been in any previous class. She had never, in any way, indicated that she knew I had a hearing loss. On the first day of school she seated us according to our height. Since I was on the small side, I was assigned to the second seat. It was actually better for me than the hated “front” seat. It seemed that when she taught us she would always be standing or sitting where I could easily read her lips and I had no problem keeping up with the lessons. I was probably in her class several months before I found out that she was very much aware or my hearing loss. The class had displeased her somehow and she lashed out at them. Then she turned to me and said: “If Elaine had her hearing, she would be head and shoulders above most of you.” I was speechless! Miss
Singer not only knew I had a hearing loss, but she was the first person to tell me that, far from being worthless, I was as good as the other students.
On the last day of school, I met her in the schoolyard. She put her arm around me and told me she was concerned about me going off to Junior High School. I could see that this wonderful teacher, with so many years of teaching behind her, wished she could continue to be with me. When I entered Junior High, I found that the new school also grouped the students in three classes. But this time I was assigned to the best “A” class. I
knew then that Miss Singer was still with me and that she had given me a priceless gift. She had given me back my belief in myself.
By Kimberly
I walked into a pharmacy in La Spezia, Italy with torn khakis and a bloody knee, asking for help in my limited Italian vocabulary. The pharmacist smiled and proceeded to explain in slow, clear Italian the antibacterial wipes and creams that she had on hand, showing me the back of the boxes so that I could read the ingredients for myself. She used a hand gesture to indicate where I could pay, and turned the cash register screen toward me to make sure that I understood how much I owed. She did all of these things for me because she knew that I wasn’t fluent in Italian, but ironically, they are the very things that would help me in English as well because I have significant hearing loss.
La Spezia, just before I fell!When I decided to teach a two-month study abroad course in Italy, I was expecting to feel the effects of my hearing loss more keenly. Any time that I’d spent in a foreign language class or watching a foreign movie had taught me that guessing what I’ve just heard (something that I have to do every day) is so much harder when I’m not hearing English. Most of the time, my brain automatically fills in words, and much like the autocompletion function on my cell phone, it’s usually a big help but sometimes hilariously wrong.
In a less familiar language, I have virtually no autocomplete helping me, and I’m forced to guess far more words—some of which I may know and some of which I may not. I expected to feel especially lost in Italy, but I decided to grin and bear it for the sake of a new and exciting experience (and the food)! What I didn’t count on was that living and working with people who speak Italian isn’t the same thing as trying to watch an Italian movie without captions. People in conversations, especially kind people (which many Italians are), will try to work with you so that you understand. And unlike my hearing loss, which people frequently forget about, my status as a foreigner in need of help was something that people in Italy almost never forgot. Unexpectedly, being an outsider helped me cope with being hard of hearing.
The hiker’s view of Corniglia in Cinque TerreI had likewise overestimated the degree to which my hearing loss would make my time taking Italian classes more challenging. I had decided to take the accelerated Italian class with some of my students but harbored some doubts in the beginning about my abilities to keep up. However, being honest with my instructor about my hearing loss from the beginning helped us determine some easy strategies to help me follow along.
Whenever a new word was introduced, or even whenever I was having trouble with a sentence, she would write it on the board. As an instructor myself, I knew that all of the students were actually benefiting from this extra step put into place for me. I often find that that’s the case with accommodations for students. Because they reinforce an audio or visual component of the lesson, they typically aid learning for everyone else.
I still ran into frustrating moments in class. When my instructor asked me questions and I misheard what she had said, I felt the same sort of panicked feeling that I used to get when I was younger and not yet as accustomed to my hearing loss. I didn’t know where to begin—how to explain what I hadn’t understood, and I found myself frustrated that everything had to be just a little harder for me than it was for everyone else.
For some reason, being put on the spot and not hearing in a foreign language brought all of that back to me in a way that I can’t really explain. Still, I’d remember myself and remember that I’ve had so many of those moments in life, so I know how to deal with them. A couple of times, I’d see a student of mine struggling to keep up in an Italian class or conversation, nearly in tears, and I could say, “I know how you feel. It’s frustrating. Give yourself permission not to understand everything! Know when to try and when to take a break.”
The view of Florence from Boboli Gardens.I’m not going to pretend like it was always easy. I ran into some real challenges. I had practiced explaining my hearing loss to people before I left. “Sono dura d’orecchi” means, “I’m hard of hearing,” but the first time that I tried to say it, the person who I was talking to snickered and told me, “Don’t say that. Say ‘Ho problemi di udito,’ which means, ‘I have problems hearing.’”
When I prodded as to why, I found out that “dura d’orecchi” was the clinical term for being hard of hearing but was also slang for “stupid.” That’s pretty much the most obvious example of audism in action that I can think of. “Audism,” for anyone who doesn’t know, is the belief that people who hear are better or smarter than people who don’t hear or have some hearing loss. It doesn’t take much of a leap to figure out how the word for “hard of hearing” came to mean “stupid,” just like Americans will sometimes use “retarded” that way.
Trying to figure out what I was going to call myself made me confront all of those foolish assumptions about hearing loss that used to make me ashamed, especially when I was a kid. I was actually afraid to let most people in Italy know that I had hearing loss, just because you never know how someone is going to react, and I wasn’t sure what their cultural attitudes were toward it. The more comfortable I got, though, the more I realized that people would understand. As long as you approach people with specific requests, like, “I don’t hear well. Can I stand near you while you give the tour?” they will help and be nice about it. Just like in the States, learning concise ways to explain what you need goes a long way.
Learning how to ask for what I wanted was always a challenge. I’d ask an Italian coworker, “What’s the word for ______ in Italian?” and the answer would, of course, be incomprehensible to me! I learned to carry paper with me and ask, “Can you write that down?” Likewise, when I’d ask a waiter to repeat something, or when my husband would repeat it for me, the waiter would almost always switch to English, which was frustrating, since I wanted to learn the language. Simply explaining that I was hard of hearing first usually really helped, and when it didn’t, I just went with the flow. You can’t win every battle.
The downtown nightlife in Genova.I had learned to let myself lose now and then when brushing up my language on Duolingo—a free language app that “gamifies” the study of foreign language. Rather than turn off the listening option, which would give me no practice listening, I simply tried listening and failed repeatedly! Yes, my scores suffered, and yes, it took me far longer than my husband to work my way through the lessons, but I was trying. I have to give myself permission to be pretty bad at languages! Even if other people never understand why it’s harder for me, I understand, and I cut myself a break.
When I was taking the formal Italian class, I asked for transcripts of oral exercises. One of my classmates, of course, griped that I “had it easier” on exams because of this accommodation—completely oblivious to the extra challenges that make this one “advantage” so necessary. Again, I could brush it off. When you’re hard of hearing, you have to either give yourself permission to fall behind or give yourself permission to ask for help, knowing that there will be frustrating consequences either way and that it’s important to pick your battles.
I think that humility is a skill that anyone has to hone while learning a new language. Because of my hearing loss, I’m used to not knowing what’s being said. A lot of people aren’t! So maybe my abilities to learn a new language aren’t going to be as sharp as a hearing person’s, but my attitude can still give me the edge. I’m a different learner, not a worse one.
Learning a new language, especially through an immersion experience, is disorienting and tiring. For those of us who have the extra challenge of hearing loss, it can sometimes feel impossible. Yet, we have our own superpowers—our ways of dealing with confusion and exhaustion that we have honed over the years. Living in Italy reminded me that I’m far from helpless, and that there are always a few people out there willing to make the extra effort to communicate when it really counts.
