A Modern Day Thomas Edison: No More Laughing at the Deaf Boy is a Story of Courage and Perseverance

 

No More Laughing at the Deaf Boy

By Geoffrey Ball

Kindle ASIN: B008G337TY

(Also available in print)

Haymon Verlag, 2012

Ebook, 290 pages

Buy link 

 

Reading this book was like going back in time. I used to live in Northern California—in Cupertino, in fact! We also lived in Sunnyvale and Santa Clara for a time. I didn’t know about some of the places mentioned in this book, as the story begins in the 70s, before we lived there, but when he started talking about his high school years, I recognized some of the programs available for the Deaf/HOH he mentioned, because I was in them too. But I nearly jumped out of my seat with excitement when he mentioned Harvey D. Day. Mr. Day was my teacher, too! Though he was my teacher at Monta Vista High School. Wow! I didn’t know that Mr. Day had such a long history in working with the Deaf/HOH in educational settings.

 

While the story about how Geoffrey uses his disability as a way to gain sympathy and support from an airline agent is funny, it was also a little irritating. I mean, I know it worked, but he was only perpetuating the “deaf and dumb” stereotype, especially with the way he talked.

 

Reading about his experiences with the implant was inspiring, mostly because I have been on the fence about getting one myself. I almost died laughing over the cyborg comment he made to the kid in the phone interview.

 

The whole story about the implant is fascinating and I thought it was awesome how the author literally saved his invention from the trash can. It went on to help thousands of people, even children. At the same time, I wonder about it. As a teenager, I was told I was a good candidate for the cochlear implant, but my parents could not afford the operation. This was a barrier for a long time. Now I also have to deal with doctors telling me that it is too late to get a cochlear implant, because the cochleae of my ear has filled up with bone, so a CI would be useless. I would like to think that I still have a chance though. If only. (I wonder if the author’s Bonebridge implant would solve this problem.)

 

I loved this quote: “Most creative people don’t punch a clock, and many of us are just about always working.” The author was talking about the odd hours he and fellow researchers worked in the lab, but this is also true for a lot of creative people who don’t work in R&D. Writers, for example. Even if a writer gets themselves accustomed to churning out work from 9-5, they still have the ability to “keep working” even after they think they are done for the day. They get ideas and come across something that compels them to make changes to their work. For example, I wrote a short story recently, but I felt it needed a better beginning. The idea for that better beginning came to me in the early hours of the morning days later. Creatives are just not capable of doing the 9-5 thing with their work.

 

I also really like this quote: “We hearing-impaired people often misunderstand words and are used to the strange looks we get when we appear to be stumbling with our thoughts or occasionally have odd behavior and conversations. We learn that dwelling on such matters is an exercise in futility, so we push on the best we can. So we are not afraid of getting the odd glance, of saying the wrong thing or off-putting from time to time, or even of being completely wrong. We just do it, knowing that we will eventually get it right. And if not, so what? No one else has yet either. From these experiences we also know that inventions sometimes come about by accident: We’re looking for one thing but find another, and this new thing turns out to be even better than the one we were originally looking for.”

 

It takes a special kind of person to accept the communication nuances that occur when a hearing person is communicating with a Deaf person. A Deaf person tends to repeat phrases they have been told, only because we want to make sure we understood everything that was just said to us. I know one Deaf person who told me I should stop doing this because people think it’s weird, but I still do it because I have to be absolutely certain I have understood everything the person said or asked me.

 

Another thing is that I often ask people to repeat what they said when I didn’t get all of the words. When they fill in that gap, I’ll stop them and give them my answer, because I already know what the rest of it is.

 

And another thing I do that a lot of people really HATE is bluff my way through a conversation. Sometimes I get uncomfortable asking people to repeat themselves if I don’t understand everything they said, because I know people hate repeating things. So I just “bluff” — which is, pretend I understood them. This habit was an issue when I worked as a DSP, because I was told that it’s important that I make it clear that I understand everything told to me. In social circles, it’s been the cause of a lot of misunderstandings and frustration. In one instance where I bluffed my way through a conversation with someone who had a mustache and beard, so I could not lipreading them AT ALL, this person later unfriended me on Facebook and I always wondered if it was because my bluffing of our conversation not only got him angry but seemed like I was being rude. (I asked his wife about the unfriending thing and she told me he only wanted to connect with people he was close to but I called BS.)

 

Even so, what the author said in the above quote really hits home. I’m not afraid of being wrong when I try to communicate with people who won’t write things down or fingerspell words to me, because I know that since I can’t hear, misunderstandings will happen. Confusion will happen. An imperfect conversation WILL happen! That’s just the way it is when there is nothing being used to accommodate the person’s deafness. And I am indeed used to the odd glances! And I guess, too, the unfriendings.

 

I really enjoyed reading this memoir. What an amazing story! It was truly inspiring and I am so glad that Geoffrey wrote this book. Geoffrey Ball is a modern day Thomas Edison who has helped a lot of hearing impaired people regain a better quality of life from his invention — except, in this case, this particular Edison managed to fix his own hearing problem! 

Five stars. 

 

Disclaimer: I downloaded this book onto my Kindle reading app. I was not paid or coerced in any way to review this book. My decision of whether or not to review a book for this blog is strictly personal and without any pressure from the book's author.   

Twelve Years a Deafie: Sound is One Woman’s Experience of Losing, then Regaining, Her Hearing

 

Sound: A Memoir of Hearing Lost and Found

By Bella Bathurst

Profile Books, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-77164-382-5

Buy link

 

 

Before I get into this review, let me note that I read this book on the Libby app. Page numbers on the app do not reflect page numbers in print editions so I did not include the digital page numbers for quotes.

 

Sound is a memoir written by a woman living in the UK who lost her hearing for 12 years. When someone loses their hearing, they pretty much think it’s a permanent loss. However, in Bella’s case, this did not happen. She did get her hearing back, after twelve years of severe hearing loss. I chose to read this book out of curiosity. I wanted to know her story, her experience being deaf, and just how she got her hearing back. In reading the whole book, I was not disappointed. However, there are some parts of the book which I felt the need to comment on, both as a person who is deaf and as a reader.

 

The book begins with an adventure story: She accompanied friends to go sailing. This particular incident takes place after she has lost her hearing and she is wearing hearing aids. As someone who has once A: Been on a boat and B: Used to wear hearing aids, I approached the reading of this particular chapter with a bit of concern. If you’re going to go sailing, chances are pretty good you may get hit by a random wave of water or water may splash over the side of the boat and right onto any person in its path. Hearing aids and water DO NOT go together, at all. If you get your hearing aid wet, it can cause damage. Still, I read this particular chapter with interest to see what happened. Naturally, disaster struck, but oh what a story it was!

 

Sadly, though, this experience was a grim reminder to the author of just how her hearing loss affected the status quo of her life. She was independent, carefree and ready to take on any challenge. She looked fear in the eye and winked back. But losing her hearing proved to derail all of her gust for life and adventure.

 

The book shares how she adapts to this unexpected turn of events in her life. One minute, she is a 28-year-old enjoying a ski trip with friends. The next, she experiences difficulty hearing. She then gets the sad news that she is going deaf.

 

Before total deafness sets in, she shares how she tried to enjoy as much of life as possible, though as her hearing loss set in, so, too, did her depression. She finds relief in studying the lives of other people who have gone deaf (notably Beethoven) as well as studying gradual hearing loss in general. Her research on Beethoven is intriguing. Now I want to read about him.

 

Apparently, the term for her condition is "pseudohypacusis.” I never knew there was a term for nonorganic hearing loss! It was good to learn this term and, at first, I thought this applied to my own situation. However, since I lost my hearing due to meningitis, mine is called “sensorineural deafness.” This kind of deafness is, I feel, important to include when talking about different ways a person can become deaf. Her research prompts her to discuss how people lost their hearing in an unnatural way – such as with work-related deafness (military, aviation, construction, rock music), but there is no mention of losing hearing from an illness, as in my case. This was very disappointing.

 

She seems to perceive a majority of Deaf individuals as leading lives of seclusion because of their deafness. In the past, this was true, because deaf people were NOT the majority, deafness was seen as a sign of mental deterioration or impairment, and we did not have many accommodations for the deaf then as we do now (interpreters, for example). Plus, not many people were sensitive to the communication needs of the deaf. Today, it is always a joy to come across people who know some sign language or who can, at the very minimum, use fingerspelling to spell out words. In the past, however, coming across such a person while out and about was rare.

 

Of the Deaf individuals she communicates with in this book, one of them shares with her his own experience in going to bars with his friends, who are also deaf. He shared how their use of sign language was seen as an act of aggression and many pub owners called police on them, thinking these guys were going to cause problems. I recall one story I read some time ago in which a Deaf man was communicating with another person in sign language and he was confronted by police because the police thought this guy was flashing gang signs.

 

There are many passages in this book which really made me think. There were also many passages which I could relate to. Here is one of them: "If you're deaf, you're focused outwards, registering visually all the information which might otherwise come to you aurally – announcements, warnings, communication from those you're with. Those who can hear are accustomed to using their ears as eyes in the back of their heads, so if they're walking through an airport and a luggage cart comes beeping up behind them then they move out of the way without needing to turn around to verify the cart's existence. Hearing has given them a three-dimensional comprehending. But those who are deaf can only be aware of that cart because they've seen it. One sense must do the work of two." The Deaf hear with their eyes since we cannot hear with our ears. For those individuals who are not deaf and blind, myself among them, we rely on our eyes to help us be aware of our surroundings. I once spilled a bottle of pills on my way through a hallway. Despite the wooden floor I walked on, I did not know I spilled these pills until I looked down at an empty pill bottle and turned around to see a nice little trail of pills along the hallway. We can’t be aware of a car coming up behind us because we can’t hear or feel it, but if we see it, we know that a car is coming up behind us and we need to get out of the way.

 

In addition to using our eyes to help us “hear” things around us, we also rely on vibrations. If a heavy object drops on a wooden floor, we feel that something fell on the floor. Whenever I get home from an outing and I’m unlocking the front door, I know that the dog is barking at the door because I can feel the sound vibrations. I can feel that the washing machine is running just by placing my hand on it and that music is playing just from feeling the sound vibrations.

 

Her reflections on sounds and conversations she could easily hear pre-deafness made me think about my own experiences. I still remember things that were said by various people in my past before I lost my hearing at age 13. As a kid, I would listen to music as I fell asleep, and I still remember the song “I Can’t Stop Loving You” that Michael Jackson sang as I drifted off to sleep.

 

This book captures Bathurst’s experience of living with deafness for 12 years. She has a surgery called a stapedectomy that eventually helps her brain to just "right itself." As she writes, "Science had given me back my hearing." And the best part is that it's not "artificial hearing" like one gets via a hearing aid, but REAL hearing. The kind that is natural. It's amazing and wonderful that she got that sense of natural hearing back.

 

I really enjoyed reading this book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading about what it’s like to cope with being late-deafened and different takes on the experience of living with deafness.