I wasn't your diligent, studious, high achieving deaf kid. As soon as I could talk, even at deaf school, I was mouthy. I once threatened to give a teacher a black eye, so as the legend goes. I'm sure some stories have gotten embellished with time. I always had to have one last word with my parents, and my mother often washed my mouth out with soap. Then it was, "Just wait until your father comes home."...! I didn't even make the Honor Roll until my senior year of high school. I didn't "blossom academically" until college.
I definitely was a late bloomer. I was never one of those kids who had a definite picture of who she wanted to be "when I grow up." I STILL don't know what I want to do when "I grow up"! I am still evolving as a person. One of the best life lessons I ever learned was taking what was then called Distributive Education in High School. My parents honestly didn't know if I would end up learning a trade or go to college. My parents at the time thought working in a gift shop wrapping gifts in a local mall was too dangerous a job for a high school student, so I wound up working in a cafeteria - behind the scenes. That really was hard physical labor, and I hadn't thought about college. My parents weren't sure that I HAD the grades to get in, and like many deaf kids, I wasn't the best test taker when it came to standardized tests. Well, I had the cafeteria job from high school until the spring semester of graduate school, so I had the chance to observe the lives of my fellow blue-collar workers. Many of them took me under their wing and gave me some practical advice about life- advice I still follow to this day.
I'd rather be tired from physical labor, because you can go to bed with sore aching muscles and sleep it off. Mental fatigue, I think, is worse. There have been many times I have suddenly jolted awake at 2:30 AM remembering some deadline that had to be met in the office the next day, only to struggle to go back into deep sleep. Just when I have fallen asleep, it is time to start another day. I used to complain to my father that I couldn't clear the clutter from my brain enough to stop thinking and go to sleep!
What a challenge to raise a deaf kid. Not only do you have to break the barrier of silence and establish communication through language, but then there are the challenges of explaining the concepts behind life's lessons. I can remember coming home one day and being frustrated when a friend of mine (unfairly, I thought) got put on restriction for something I felt didn't deserve such a punishment. I protested to my parents that my friend's parents were too strict. I couldn't understand why my parents would not intervene. I didn't understand the concept behind respecting a person as a parent.
Then there is civility. A hearing child is taught manners, how to respect someone in authority (starting with obeying a teacher's instructions to open your textbook), to obeying your supervisor's instructions on doing a task (even if you think he or she is wrong). Try doing THAT with a deaf child. My mother had the unique advantage of being a teacher of the deaf AND the mother of a deaf daughter. She walked the walk and talked the talk. I can remember her staying up late, past 11 at night, talking on the phone to a frustrated parent, or a frustrated teacher, on more than one occasion.
One of the documents I came across, while gathering documentation in the evaluation process for cochlear implant candidacy, was an assessment done by an audiologist.
This audiologist first diagnosed me as being deaf: Some of his remarks: "...presses ear to the television to hear."...imitates dog barking when she hears a dog bark. Responds to loud clapping. I was two and a half years old. How in the hell did I have the intelligence, let alone the presence of mind, to do something like "press my ear to the television to hear..."!
That leads me to think that I definitely WASN'T born deaf. My mother often talked about how confused she and my father were as parents, because I was babbling like all babies do at that age, so how could I be deaf?
Then there was my mother's reaction. When the audiologist told my mother that I was deaf, she asked the audiologist, "Is that all? Is she retarded, too"? This was before the term "mentally challenged." The audiologist said to my mother, there is nothing wrong with your daughter's mind, she just can't hear. My mother later explained she'd already been told all sorts of horror stories about what was wrong with me, including being told that I should be institutionalized.
Now babies and kids today who are diagnosed as deaf, have a lot more technology at their disposal. I have always been a curious person, and never rejected technological advances. The computer, along with the internet opened up a whole new world for deaf people. Who invented the cochlear implant? I'm glad the cochlear implant was invented, and I took forward to experiencing "sound flavorings anew" again. They say the brain never forgets to "hear." What sounds will my brain recall during the first week post-implant?
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