"Have a Blasted Day!" and other misadventures of the Hearing Impaired

I'm assuming most of you reading this know me....and if you know me, you must know my Wife, Sherry. Since a very young age, Sherry has been hearing impaired. This has been a source of struggle and pain for her for most of her life, and yet at times we have been able to find humor in the things that have been mis-heard or misunderstood.

Tonight we were shopping at the dreadful WAL-MART and as we were leaving the cashier said "Have a Blessed day." I said thanks and Sherry and I continued walking out of the store. As we were walking outside Sherry turned to me and asked "What did she say?" And I replied "Have a blessed day." Sherry looked at me and asked "Have a blasted day?" Of course, we both laughed about this even after we got into the van and were pulling out of the lot.

This leads me to think about all of the ways we can help the hard-of-hearing to "hear" us better.
Of course, sometimes if you're walking and talking, just being visible to the person with the hearing loss is a problem. In Sherry's case, she reads lips a lot to get by, so if we're walking and talking, she's probably getting about a fourth of what is being said.

Sometimes when people find out she's hard of hearing they shout at her or they over enunciate which makes them look like they're playing charades or speaking like a puppet. Shouting at her raises the volume, but not the clarity of the conversation and can actually distort what the person is saying.

I try to give her clues whenever possible, but even I fall into the habit of repeating the same words over again...this doesn't help very much because if she didn't hear it once, it's likely that she won't hear it again....so rephrasing really helps, especially on the phone.

Talking one on one with her is best...background noises and distractions are....DISTRACTIONS! Imagine that?!!! If something is misunderstood, keep trying and rephrasing if you have to.
If she misunderstands something, correct her politely...try not to laugh...although, as I mentioned earlier...if you know her well and are comfortable together, sometimes the things that are misunderstood are really very funny...

My kids favorite one is the time that there was a woodpecker outside our bedroom window pecking away at the guttering. It was pretty loud and of course had a metallic "clang" to it, but she couldn't tell what it was. Jared, Dustin and I each tried to explain that it was a woodpecker, but she wasn't catching it...finally she said "How can there be a dishwasher on the side of the house???" The kids nearly fell in the floor laughing.

She used to get really upset with people not being very sensitive to her hearing loss. Mostly people would pick up on the tonality of her voice and say "Oh, I love your accent, are you from Boston?" or they'd ask where she was from. She used to ignore some people, but as you know...as well meaning as people are...some people would persist and then she'd get red-faced and try to explain that she was hard of hearing. It was awkward for her and the person involved.

We once had a very pushy car salesman who was being as obnoxious as possible in trying to hard sell us a car. We were really wanting to buy this car, but not from this particular guy... he was such a stereotype with his gold chains and shirt unbuttoned to expose his chubby, hairy chest. He just kept saying and doing everything wrong and then, in the middle of everything he says to Sherry "Hey, I like your accent...it's kinda funny...like you're from the East Coast or something."

At that point I didn't know if I should duck, run or just scoot way back in my chair. I half expected Sherry to dive over the desk and pummel the guy. For a minute I almost felt bad for him. I asked him if we could be excused while we stepped out of the room to talk. We went up to the service desk and told the manager that we'd like to buy a car, but we wouldn't buy one from them if "Stan" the obnoxious salesman was involved in any way. I'm guessing Stan got talked to a bit after we left.

Sherry asked me early on when we were first dating if her "handicap" bothered me... I answered "What Handicap?" She had grown up looking at herself as a hard of hearing person, while I looked at her as someone who just happened to be hard of hearing. I wasn't about to let her hearing loss define her because she was so much more than that to me.

Since then, she's come out of her shell a lot. She's stuck up for herself in situations where she used to just sit back and simmer about it....she was always kind of shy, but she went on to be the President of the Kansas City Self Help for the Hard of Hearing, and began to see her hearing loss as just a part of who she is....albeit a BIG part, but not the ONLY part.

I teasingly told her once that I loved her so much that I "Loved her guts" (which I thought would be the opposite of hating some one's guts.) She gave me a weird look and asked "You love my Ducks?"

-David