No More Laughing at the Deaf Boy
By Geoffrey Ball
Kindle ASIN: B008G337TY
(Also available in print)
Haymon Verlag, 2012
Ebook, 290 pages
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.
