High frequency hearing loss
is affecting many more individuals in our civilization than it used to. The increased decibels of sound to which
people have been subjected in the past century, getting more raucous from
generation to generation it seems, accounts for much of this development, or so
we are told by the experts. I have no
ready statistics on the subject, but I do have a firsthand acquaintance with
the phenomenon, being one of that multitude so afflicted.
While growing up I was
unaware of any deficiency in my auditory capacities – until one day in high
school a class in which I was enrolled was required to take a hearing test that
necessitated the use of earphones, be they ever so primitive in the early 1950s
compared to what we have at our disposal today.
A series of words was spoken by a recorded voice, the first word the
loudest and each subsequent word softer than the one before it, the readings
gradually fading out until only the sharp ear of an animal could detect it. We were not told how long the list of words
was to be, only that we were to write down what we heard in a descending column
on test sheets for as long as we were able to identify the word clearly enough
to transcribe it to the paper.
I had no trouble with the
first six or seven words, but after that the speaker was off the page for me. That I was only able to pick up what was
being spoken for that short a stretch caused me no great concern while the
testing was going on. It was after the
testing was over that I got to look at the listings other members of the class
had made. All of them were quite
proficient in accurately writing down well over twenty or twenty-five. I was a bit chagrined momentarily, but the
pressure of other classes and courses of study soon deflected my attention away
from matters of hearing acuity and I thought nothing more about the question
for many years. Looking back now I
wonder why no faculty member ever approached me later about my poor
performance. That I never heard another
investigative word is a mystery to me right until this very day. To be sure my limited competence must have
been apparent to those officials of the local school board who instituted this
test and especially to those who conducted it and collected the findings.
It would be almost another two
decades before it would become an issue for me again. In the late 1960s I worked as a film critic
and media consultant for a company that published a newsletter for
international circulation. My job took
me to theaters to review current cinema, and I began to notice that I was
missing words in the dialogue on screen, much of conversation between the
characters sounding garbled and blurred, words that I knew others in the
theater were picking up quite well. I
let the matter slide for a few years, assuming that the technological changes
taking place in soundtrack recordings at that period of media buzz were such
that I would need time to acclimate myself to them. I of course had no trouble with foreign
language movies; they had subtitles, which allowed me to hear with my eyes and
not be dependent upon auditory stimulation.
But the problem with English language films continued and got worse.
It was in the spring of 1971
that physicians at Johns Hopkins told me that I was suffering from a damaged
inner ear. They supposed that I had
undergone some kind of blow to the head at some point in my early childhood,
well before that high school administered hearing test. Immediately I was 90% sure when that incident
had occurred. At the age of five I fell
off a porch banister head first, and my head landed squarely on the concrete
walk below. I had a swelling for some time
after that, but since I got no medical attention for it (except ice packs that
my mother administered) and since the swelling bye and bye went down, neither I
nor my parents thought any more about it.
I might have had a fractured skull, but in the absence of x-rays there
was no way to tell and there is no way now to determine if that was in fact
what developed from the accident. The
Johns Hopkins folks explained that when the inner ear, involved as it is with
balance, is damaged, the hearing acuity can suffer, since balance and hearing
are closely intertwined. In my case a
high frequency hearing loss was the apparent result.
This was very unsettling news
to me, since I had a job that required a lot of ear usage. I knew at a certain level, though it took me
a while to face it, that my movie reviewing days were numbered. Tons of water have gone over the dam in these
past fifty years since then, a time during which my attendance at theaters has
dropped off considerably, as the hearing problem has predictably gotten worse. I now rarely go. In most cases the frustration of not being
able to follow dialogue on the soundtrack has been too acute for me to derive
any pleasure from any viewing. Even
those devices that many theaters now furnish to help the hearing impaired have
not been enough to solve my problem, with my degree of impairment. To this day I am lucky if I can grasp as much
as 50% of what is being said, even with the use of that device. This explains why you readers do not see me
reviewing new movies until months after their date of theatrical release. I have to wait for them to be released into
DVD before I can fully absorb their content.
If it were not for the subtitles that can now be selected out of the
menu on just about all the discs I would still be at a great loss. You might say that DVD has brought about a
Renaissance in my love affair with movies.
Now I can hear with my eyes in English language films just as I have
always done with foreign films.
But this essay is not
essentially about me and my life story.
I want to say a few things about how you people of normal hearing can
and should relate to those of us with severe impairment. I want to leave you with a few do’s and
don’t’s.
First of all, when speaking
with one of us, face the individual. Let
him/her see your lip movement. That is
not to say that many hard of hearing folk are trained to read lips, as many
completely deaf people are. I certainly
am not. But it helps if the lips are
seen. We have something visual to match
with the ear’s experience, however poor that experience. You are not likely to connect, if your head
is turned away or your back is to the one with whom you are speaking. Hearing impairment does not mean that the
person is deaf. We can hear you, but in
most cases what we lack is not volume but clarity.
Clarity! Clarity!
Clarity!
That is the most important
word you will read in this essay. Facing
off in another direction can give your speech a muffled sound, one that is
similar to the way you would be heard if you had your head in a bucket or if
you were covering your mouth with a pillow.
And of course keep your hands away from your mouth so that the lips stay
visible. Give the handicapped individual
the chance to hear you with the eyes.
Secondly, do not shout to
make yourself heard. It is not necessary
and may be unsettling to the impaired person.
As stated in the preceding paragraph, we need clarity, not volume. Loudness does not improve the chances of a
successful exchange. Once my church
installed a new sound system, and beforehand I was consulted as to where the
amplifiers should be located for my maximum advantage. Nobody understood me, when I replied that it
did not matter where they were placed.
What was needed was a hearing loop system. Amplifiers are always “off yonder somewhere,”
never close enough to guarantee auditory efficiency. They are like voices coming from somewhere
across a crowded room. Today that same
church of mine has the kind of loop that only requires me to snap a button on
my hearing aids and at once the voice over the system sounds as if it is
talking directly into my ear. The level
of sound is unimportant. The clarity of
the words is of paramount importance.
Please do not shout.
Thirdly, talk slowly. Some people have more naturally speedy voices
than do others. Locality can be a major
factor. In the Deep South, somewhere I
have not been for a long while, I would probably have relatively little
difficulty following what people say; in that region there is more drawling and
broad expressiveness. In the more
northern or western states the natives tend to step on the gas much more. That has been another factor that has made
movie viewing without subtitles so nerve-rackingly hard for me. Since the early 1960s dialogue has been much
more life-like. Even the best of
performers with the best of sound engineering and editing give us slurring and
mumbly speech in conversation more so than the performers of yore did. Dialogue has become more colloquial. As for pop singers, backed up by electronic
instrumentation- well, for the likes of
me that is a lost cause. And whispering
is out of the question. I have for many
years been totally unable to access whispers, no matter how close the
whispering tongue gets to my ear. We
live in a fast-talking culture, with even the most learned of televised personalities
often rushing their words or failing to enunciate. It behooves someone trying to speak with a
hearing impaired person not to add to the problem by babbling and
sputtering. You may have to change your
normal way of conversing to get the person to comprehend you.
All this advice is based upon
the assumption that you really do wish to communicate. So I suppose the fourth admonition is to
examine your mind and heart, be in touch with how much this person means to you
or how little. Are you really committed
to connecting with her or him?
Naturally, some individuals mean more to you than do others, and it
depends upon what this impaired person is asking of you. There are some conversations we all wish to
avoid, even if hearing capacity is normal, some people we like more than others
and feel closer to than others. You are
under no obligation to give a hearing impaired person a carte blanche amount of
your time. But be polite and clear with anyone
with whom a conversation has started.
You do not have to let them bend your ear, if they are on a subject that
you would rather not get into. But let what
you do choose to say be said slowly.
Fifth and last for those who
hear normally is a very big don’t.
Don’t – please don’t ever say to a hearing impaired person, “Oh,
never mind!” Those words are deadly to
us. If you have been struggling to make
one of us understand something you have said and do not appear to be
succeeding, do not be dismissive by saying words to the effect “Oh, never mind,
it isn’t that important.” If it is
important enough for you to bring the matter up in the first place and speak
about it, it is important enough to get it across. Please be responsible for your own communication. What you are probably saying is “You, not
what I’ve been trying to say, are not important enough for me to waste any more
breath on you.” To speak thusly is to
disparage the person being addressed. We
who have severe hearing losses suffer enough sense of alienation as it is;
please refrain from adding to it. And
make no mistake about it, hearing loss is the most alienating of all
afflictions. Any behavioral expert and
certainly any ear doctor or audiologist will tell you this. Someone who is blind experiences much of it,
but at least he or she can follow conversation.
They are not cut off. The same
goes for a paraplegic. But when one’s
capacity to receive words being spoken is hampered, it makes one feel shut
out. And you can say “Oh, never mind”
without ever uttering the words. A
facial expression or a bit of body language can say it. A gesture of dismissal is not hard to come by
and it hurts just as much as the spoken words.
Yes, sometimes making us
understand is all but impossible, due to any one of a number of factors. But if you see you’re not getting across, ask
someone nearby to try a hand at it. Get
help. It may be the shape of your voice
or your accent or a speech mannerism peculiar to your ethnic group or your
locality. Someone else’s voice may be more
compatible with the handicapped hearer’s range.
But never be dismissive.
It should be pointed out, of
course, that not all hearing incapacities are the same. Some are more severe than others. Some require more sophisticated hearing
assistance than others. My hearing aids
are the top of the line, and no, I will not tell you how much I paid for
them. It is true that much of these passionate feelings about communication that
I have been sharing are conditioned by the severity of my impairment. I have family and friends who have the same
type of loss that requires aids but can function far better than I can in
situations in which I am completely wiped out.
Not all of us are the same, but I trust any hearing impaired individual whom
you might encounter to make it clear and plain to you what she or he requires in
order to hold a coherent conversation with you.
Finally, I have a “do” for
the hearing impaired. Yes, I am talking
to us in the club now! Do be patient with
those who are trying hard to make you hear.
Do not show arrogance or exasperation – and don’t you be dismissive. I have had moments in my long history when I
wanted to say, “Oh, never mind! Trying
to understand you is not worth the effort.”
We have to bear in mind that the person with whom we are trying to
converse did not create our hearing problem.
No one is to blame. And I often
have a hard time remembering that if I had not undergone that inner ear damage
and all the aftereffects of it, I would have had just as hard a time
comprehending why volume increase is not enough or why it does not matter where
the amplifiers are placed. So let us, my
sisters and brothers, be patient with the hearing world around us. Let us be responsible for getting clear as to
what is being said, however much trouble we must go through. Hearing loss may be alienating, but do not
accept alienation without a fight. And
find a way to hear as much as you can with your eyes.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com
I welcome feedback. Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net
No comments:
Post a Comment