Friday, August 05, 2005

Welcome to my deaf, and hearing world!


















Deaf and hearing. That, dear reader, is what I am. Able to enjoy the varied company of both deaf and hearing people, through sign and speech, natter and chatter, utters and mutters... okay, okay. I won't try bad poetry in an introduction again...

Best of both worlds I hear you say! Well, maybe! Which set of people do I prefer? No comment!

I guess you could say, in terms of audiology (and I mean audiology) that I'm bi. I swing, conversationally at least, both ways. You could add to that, and say that I'm slightly curious. Why? Because with the advent of digital technology, the way I hear is set to change markedly sometime around 11pm this Tuesday...

Right now, and indeed for the past 23 years of my existence, I've worn analogue hearing-aids which amplify (in a rather crude manner) everything. They have three dials which are adjusted for the complexities of my hearing loss. Without them life would be quiet. They are a godsend. However, they are not very sophisticated. In fact, they're not really sophisticated at all...

Put simply, they amplify everything. When walking by the road, when talking in a busy bar, I hear everything. That's not so bad, except that when you hear everything, it's very difficult to pick out anything.

Thus, in some situations, I appear as though I have no hearing loss at all. At other times, I appear as though I wouldn't be able to pick out a jumbo jet passing my outer earlobe.

The polarisation of my twin identities (hints of a horror movie character abound - Jekyll and Hyde anyone?) is something I've become markedly more aware of since I moved to London, and worked differing jobs in the TV industry.

I remember, during my first week working on VEE-TV (the deaf magazine show on C4), picking up the phone one day to see a colleague looking at me as if in shock. She had only ever seen me signing, and simply could not believe her eyes to see me suddenly pick up the phone and start nattering away into a handset!

The best thing about VEE-TV was that because everyone was signing, it felt as though we were all equal. Wherever we went, conversations were full of typical deaf stories - ten minute long accounts of the intricacies of a hungover walk home were relayed in drink-spilling, hysteric-inducing visual prose... every lunchtime, every evening... in fact, all day, every day at work!

That office was really quiet (possibly because it was half-full of sign language users) and I found that additionally, I could hear pretty much everything the hearing crew could - even across the room! Because of this, I think some of them began to doubt whether I was truly deaf at all..!

After VEE-TV, I went to work for a reality documentary TV company, which is probably closer to my natural environment in the sense that at school, university and work, I grew up surrounded by hearing people. However, the offices are far louder and the conversation more rapid. Most of the time, I keep up, but this week has been one of those weeks...

My colleague commented over lunch today that my hearing seems to be getting a lot worse lately - and I had to agree - I'd just returned back from the newsagents with the wrong chocolate bar for her... couldn't throw that one back in her face. Well, not the accusation, anyway...

I had to admit that it was true that I've been saying my most used phrases - 'what?' 'sorry?' and 'could you repeat that, y'loser?' (okay, maybe not the last one..!) far more often than usual. However, whether or not my hearing really is getting worse or not is open to conjecture - since how well I hear in a given situation depends on a whole range of criteria... and here they are...

A brief rambling on hearing what on earth people are saying...

Looking for factors in my week's malaise, I arrived at an obvious starting point.

Firstly, most obviously, I've had a bit of a cold. Nothing too major, a bit of greenery, nothing much more (apologies!) but still...

As well as blocking things up somewhat, my voice became a bit of a husk earlier on in the week, which was great for seducing women on the phone, but bad in the sense that every now and then my voice would break into a high-pitched squeal more usually associated with a 13 year-old adolescent... or alternatively, someone who's recentely been castrated. Or both.















Secondly, tiredness has befallen me over the past couple of days. Maybe it's because I persevered through the cold with going to the gym before work, or maybe it's because work's been pretty hectic, but one thing's for sure, when I'm tired, I 'hear' a lot worse than normal.

This is because I work hard just to hear. I supplement my hearing with a combination of lipreading, a heavy dose of concentration on the crude sounds amplified by my hearing-aid, and also, pure guesswork. Yep, guesswork. Filling in the gaps in sentences, working out what someone is likely to be asking me in the office, so that in fact, when sounds aren't clear, much of what I do 'hear' I don't hear at all. I'm just figuring out the most likely words, and meanings, and slotting them into the right places..!

Thus I depend on other people making themselves quite clear to me. Clearer than they would with a typical person. However, because sometimes I appear as though I need no help at all, people aren't so good at remembering to do this. Thus, when they talk while looking away, mumble and mutter, or speak at great speed, only meta-physical analysis would enable me to figure out what they're saying!

Looking into people's souls, however, has not yet been picked up by the NHS as a miraculous cure for deafness (it did well in medical trials apparently, but went against the freedom of information act!). And so we struggle on...

Any one-to-one problems I might have are compounded by the fact that I work in an office with a residual echo. The sounds I am hearing are surrounded by a concerto of people nattering, watching video tapes, and scraping chairs around for fun. The office has a wooden floor, high ceiling and open plan layout. All do not help with clarity of sound...

So am I having a bad week or is my hearing really getting worse... you decide!

Perhaps the easiest way to explain listening to different people is through this driving analogy -

'What?!' Why people are like vehicles on the road...


By Prof. Scribbler (2005)

Listening to lots of different people speak is a bit like switching vehicles every few seconds on a journey. Many people are like lorries. They've got a big engine, they speak powerfully, clearly, at the same consistent pace. These are my favourite people. Some people however, are best compared to a Robin Reliant.











To all intents and purposes, they look and speak as if a normal person, but you can't help but keep missing things. A stutter here , a mumble there... words not making sense. Missing something. The fourth wheel, so to speak. It's hard work.

Then with some people, everything seems automatic, they can zip in and out of conversational lanes and you hardly have to do any listening work. With others, it's like they're crunching gears all the time. And finally, for some, it's a write-off. Better call the AA, because you're not going to get through this conversation without serious mechanical assistance..!

Ferrari's go so fast that you'd probably come off the road if you tried to keep up... some people are like this. Then you've got people that only take their conversational car out once every few weeks. They're sweet, but with them, it's not about hearing them or not, it's just that they're so dull you try and overtake...

At the end of the day, however good your vehicle is - sometimes there's just too much traffic on the road, and no-one's going anywhere. There's just too much noise, congestion and talking, chatting, ramblings - all grinds to a halt! (this is a terrible analogy, I know, but I hope it helps..!)

And don't even let me get started on pollutants...

No references here, you'll note. It's not a very scientific study!

So back to the normal blog... the longest I've ever written by the way. Sorry!

Incidently, lately, I was totally knackered after spending the day with a friend who had a habit of speaking very rapidly as we strolled around the city. I managed, with much effort mind, to keep up with the conversation, only to find myself practically unwilling to speak at work the following day. Put simply, I was 'talked out', and there seemed absolutely nothing I could do about it!

So if I ever ignore you, you'll know why! Or at least, you'll think you will...

Then there was the night the old faces from the VEE-TV team met up a few weeks back. Completely the opposite. Relax, watch what's going on, sip (or gulp) your drink. A whole different kind of time...

Thus in different environments, you will see a different 'me.' With a signing crowd, or with hearing people in a quiet environment, where I can hear everything easily, you'll see an energetic, jovial chap... at least, when I'm in the mood! In a noisy pub, involved in a talk-ledgroup conversation, you'll often see me switching tack from a group effort, and instead focus on small conversations with the people next to me.

There is one exception to the rule, however...

Clubs always suited me. Perhaps this is because they are so loud no-one can hear anything anyway, and everyone becomes a lipreader. Of whom I am usually one of the more proficient, by virtue of many years experience!












As far as coping mechanisms go, I've recently realised that I've also picked up the habit of deliberately and kinba dominantly starting conversations when meeting new people. (Not a bad habit to pick up, I guess!) The reason for this, I think, is that I unconciously realised that if I establish the topic of conversation early enough, I'd have a much higher chance of working out what the other person is saying back to me! Their conversational options become narrowed, and thus, the chances of me totally mishearing or misunderstanding what they were saying are also drastically reduced...








All of which means (you're probably wondering whether there is a conclusion to this endless diatribe!) that the fitting of a digital hearing-aid on Tuesday will certainly be one of the more interesting events of my short life.

Promising a far more intricate tuning to my hearing needs than the basic anaolgue edition I've relied on for the past 23 years, I'm hoping that these new lumps of pink technology attached to my being will perhaps take away some of the pure adjustment and guesswork that's a feature of my everyday interaction.

Don't think I've got it hard though - I know plenty of people with differing levels of hearing who have to work far harder, far more of the time, to get by. I'm just trying to say - that for me, and others who depend on hearing-aids, the whole 'hearing' thing is often far more complicated than it looks!

Changing from what you're used to ain't easy, and I've been used to one thing (however basic it seemingly was) all my life - you grow to love it. These hearing-aids have seen me through plays and films, dates and mates, records and gigs. They've been with me every step of the way... *sob!* Getting emotional now...

Despite all that though, next week, I think, promises some sort of new beginning.

And come Tuesday, I'll bore you all again by telling you all about it!

1 Comments:

Blogger The Scribbler said...

Thanks - keep reading!

5:30 PM  

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