There’s a look that I get every now and again at the library. It’s a look poets would be proud of. It’s a look that artists would be jealous of. If a picture is worth a thousand words, The Look is worth a million words.
The brows furrow and the eyes narrow. The lips press together and the shoulders arch back. I see a parade of emotions march across the patron’s face. They are confused by me. Then they are angered by me. Finally, they pity me.
Saying “what” too many times in the library is a dangerous deed.
While not ruled by the dictatorial Hushed Tone any longer, the library can still be a quiet place. And so when one of these patrons asks me…something, it can be in a voice that’s a smidge above a whisper. When I say “what”, they repeat themselves. Same words, same tone. When I repeat my word, they stop a beat and look at me. Really look at me. Then they repeat themselves; same words, perhaps a slightly louder tone. I can tell it’s the same words because it’s the same unintelligible phonemes. There’s a cadence to all speech. It doesn’t matter if I understand the words making up that cadence or not. I can tell when it’s the same. When I repeat my word for the third time, that’s when I’m met with the million word look. The Look says:
“What is wrong with this fool?”
“This man is trying to get me in trouble. You’re not supposed to speak up in the library. How dare he try and trick me!”
“Oh. He’s dumb. The poor boy. He can’t understand what I’m saying. Ergo, he’s got the same intellectual capacity as a moss-covered log.”
And that’s why my right molding is black and my left molding is gold.
I dislike the emphasis hearing aid manufacturers place on invisibility. They’re always so proud when their bionic ears shrink. “No one will notice your aid!” They exclaim with pride. As another “they” say: “pride goeth before the fall.” But it’s not the manufacturers who fall, it’s us. Because amplification is not clarification. Hearing aids don’t fix our hearing. They aid our hearing. There’s a reason they’re not called hearing fixes.
I wear a button that says “please speak clearly, I’m hard of hearing.” I thought that would be enough. I thought that would save me from the often-dehumanizing self-identifying. But too many people see the button but don’t read the button. Even though my hair is short enough for people to see the tubing of my aids propping up something behind my ears, I’m too tall for them to see what that something is. I wish the tubing was neon pink. But alas, in the name of invisibility, it’s clear. When I got this set of bionic ears, my audiologist showed me Oticon’s Real 3 color options. Nary a shiny color in sight. I’m not sure it would have worked, though, since as I just stated, people can’t see the devices nestled behind my ears.
But Julie already had a solution to this.
When I first met her, I knew she was hearing impaired. So I knew to look at her ears. While hers are covered by her hair, her sparkly pink moldings still peek out. I asked her how she got them. I’d only seen clear modlings. The kids catalog, she said with glee.
So the next time I saw my audiologist I asked if I could get colored moldings. Chris is fantastic, she whipped out the brochure and showed me the colors. At the risk of copying Julie, I was really tempted to do pink. It would be jarring for a bearded, tattooed, dude to be sporting something pink. I was sure it would catch people’s attention. But when Chris said that some people choose two different colors, I knew what I had to do. I had to go with Bruins colors.
And so I did.
The Look is wilting,
Making me feel belittled.
Struggles are hidden.
Leave a Reply