Do I escape into reading thanks to all that insistent pesky active listening?
Do I enjoy always reading thanks to all that insistent pesky earning a living?
In other words, am I an introvert because I’m deaf or did my introversion help me cope with my hearing loss? I realize the futility of this Gedankenexperiment but I’m indubitably fascinated by mulling questions that are impossible to answer. And, lucky you, you get to come along for my thought experiment!
I like nothing more than sitting by a fire with a beer in one and a book in the other. I can spend an entire day or ten doing this and not get bored in the least. I’ve always got at least two books going. (As I write this I’m in the middle of five books; The Deviant’s War, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, Becoming Hearing Empowered, The Message, and Across the Nightingale Floor) Usually one fiction and one non-fiction. I flip between the books like other people flip between channels.(Though, because of my long attention span, not as frequently as channel surfers.) I love to learn about the world around me. I love to escape into worlds beyond me.
It’s elucidating. It’s exciting. It’s energizing.
I like nothing more than sitting by a fire with a beer in one and a book in the other. I can spend an entire day or ten doing this and not have to strain to hear for even the briefest of moments. I don’t have to strain to hear voices I know or voices I don’t know. I don’t have to strain to hear cars coming or cars going. I don’t have to strain to hear all the various sounds that demand my attention outside in the world or inside in the workplace.
It’s restful. It’s peaceful. It’s delightful.
But it goes beyond just books. I have a talent for deep critical thinking. I can sit and pick apart a problem, be it in the real world or in a made up world, for a long while. I don’t get antsy with inaction. Thinking is action enough for me. I felt seen during the scene in The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon and Raj stare at a formula for hours. (Watch the first 55 seconds of this clip.)
I don’t feel bored hiking alone in the woods. I don’t feel the need to talk all of the time, hell most of the time. I don’t feel the need to slalom between creeping traffic on the highway; I don’t feel the need to jump out of an airplane to feel alive; I don’t feel the need to juggle chainsaws while bouncing on a pogo stick in a rowboat. Sorry, one of those examples strays from my introverted point. Skydiving.
The activities I enjoy the most, the ways I recharge the best don’t involve listening. And that’s where my deafness and my introversion get smooshed together and leave me confused as to which is which.
When wee Brad was learning to write in grammar school, he started with his left hand and switched to his right halfway across the page.
One day Mrs. McCormack saw me doing this and told me I should choose a hand. She asked me which hand felt more comfortable. I remember looking around and seeing naught but righties. And that’s how I became one. I know my introversion aversion to being in the spotlight informed that decision. I was but a year removed from my inaugural failed hearing test. I’m sure that knowledge was floating just below the surface of my mind, as it always will, but I’m not sure if it had anything to do with that decision. That’s one scratch mark in the introverted column
When tween Brad was waiting in line in middle school, he couldn’t hear the bullies behind him. He could most certainly feel the physical attacks.
Be it between classes or coming in from recess, I was always on full alert. Not that it helped much. I know I’m not the only kid to be bullied. I know I’m not the only deaf kid to be bullied. I know that my turtling wasn’t a teenage, a mutant, nor a ninja reaction. It was an introverted reaction. The introverted inclination to read kept my nose buried in a book on the bus. I’m sure there was some part of me that realized if I was reading, then it couldn’t be claimed that I started it. Kids will be kids and so there was always the chance I would react explosively in an extroverted way. But I didn’t. Scratch another in the introvert column.
When teen Brad was taking a test in high school, he couldn’t hear what question the girl behind him wanted the answer to. So he got stabbed in the neck with a pencil. Not hard enough to draw blood but hard enough to go into a full retreat.
But it wasn’t all graphic (get it, pencils, graphite? I’m here all week.) examples. I had The Morning Group, as my group of friends called ourselves. Because… get ready for this… we hung out mostly in the morning. Clever, no? I’m not sure what my friends thought of my deafness. Not talking about it carried over to kith from kin. I know they were used to repeating themselves but I can’t remember any accommodations. (If any of y’all are reading this and have thoughts, please share!) I do remember intentionally spacing out as the noise in the cafeteria rose. It would become an even greater struggle to hear. So I stopped struggling. I cultivated the reputation for introspection.They would get used to having to bring me back to the pale blue dot. This one is tougher to score. It seems to me that my deafness increased my introversion.
For this post, I’m going to skip any formative episodes in adulthood because I believe the islands of personality we settle in childhood are on the firmest terra firma. I’ll start the beginning of the end of this post with my grand entrance into the Hard of Hearing community.
I harbored no illusions that my thought of deafness breeding introversion was anything but a straw man argument. I was dimly aware that just because peopleing double-taps my energy reserves, that was only one way to be deaf. Spending time with members of HLAA Boston I saw plenty of people that were busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest and no worse for wear no matter the time of day. Some people seem to get more energized as the meeting wore on. Introverts they are not. This was even more apparent at the HLAA Convention.
The day of the welcome back dinner was a long one. Session after session after session after keynote after dinner, it was a day filled with noise. The hall was filled with people practicing active listening with people knowing they should not cover their mouth, look away, or mumble. The latter can aptly be called practice, too, because even we deaf folk don’t always engage in deaf-friendly speech practices. Midway through dinner my brain went to bed. I soon followed. Leaving behind a group of hearing impaired people that prove to me it’s possible to be energized by peopleing even as it takes energy.
Then, of course, there’s my incomparable Hearing Things with Julie and Brad co-host. She, too, is proof that you can be both hearing impaired and extroverted. And you can read about her thoughts on being a hearing impaired extrovert here.
Chicken or the egg,
deafness or introversion?
Binaries are false.
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