A couple of years ago I went to an excellent lip reading class.  There is nothing quite like spending an hour or two every couple of weeks with a group of people who know EXACTLY what you mean about hearing loss to restore your sanity.  As well as teaching lip reading the tutor, Susan, would lead various other discussions on hearing loss-related topics.  One week we did an exercise that imagined going on a country walk and identifying all the things that affected our ability to understand the people we were walking with.

So imagine.….you are walking side by side along a wide track through a grassy field and chatting easily to someone – having a lovely time.  Then…whoops….the path narrows and you have to walk in single file – lip reading over for a while.  After a while, hurrah, back on the grassy track – no problems.  Conversation resumes.  A few hundred yards further on you have to pick your way carefully through a very muddy and churned up field, watching carefully where you put your feet.  Uh-oh – no lip reading here.

The exercise went on, with the group getting excitedly carried away recalling all the things that hinder us chatting on a country walk – a very loud waterfall, getting near a busy road with a lot of traffic noise, walking on a crunchy gravel path, a strong wind gets up….. (you wouldn’t believe the noise that wind makes rushing over hearing aids – putting your hood up helps but then that hinders turning your head round to see someone’s face, and the hood can make your hearing aids whistle….oh well….).  We had a lovely time sympathising with each other and laughing, but also remembering how difficult it must be for someone with good hearing to understand what on earth is going on with us – from chatty to silent to back again in moments for little apparent (to them) reason.

And that’s just on a country walk.  We then got onto kitchens (noisy hard surfaces, kettles, dishwashers, extractor fans…….) as opposed to carpeted living rooms (much better for hearing in) and other scenarios too many to list.

No wonder there’s a catch phrase “she can hear when she wants to”.  That’s what it must look like.  But that’s not really what is going on.

 

I’ve been trying to find funny cartoons about deafness, and it has been surprisingly difficult.

If you look on the net you can find cartoons, but a substantial proportion feature someone shouting at a deaf person.  Shouting at someone with hearing loss is not a great thing to do.  Firstly because it feels just as aggressive to the recipient as if you were shouting in anger.  Secondly, and more importantly, because it makes it far harder to lip read what someone is saying, because shouting distorts the natural lip shapes.  In any case, with modern hearing aids volume is rarely the problem.

Thankfully, in real life people don’t shout at me.  In fact, the loveliness of people I meet casually and try to communicate with never ceases to amaze me.  I say something like “I’m deaf.  I can only understand speech if I can see your face, so that I can lip read” and people respond “OK, fine”.  They turn to look at me and they largely remember to keep looking at me.  If they forget (understandably, most people don’t need their eyes to hear) and turn away I might say “Sorry, I didn’t catch that”. They will say “Oh, I forgot, sorry” and turn their head to face me again.  They never start bellowing.

People don’t even start shouting if I still have trouble understanding.  This happens because lip reading is difficult and usually at least partly based on guesswork.  (I feel another post coming on but let’s leave that one for the moment).  The window cleaner looked bemused when it took me four goes to get “have you paid for last time?” but he didn’t raise his voice.  Nor did the supermarket checkout operator when it took me a similar number of attempts to understand “have you had a good day so far?”  (Answer…..not really).  Believe me, I can understand why people would want to have a good shout in these circumstances, which makes it all the more creditable that people keep their cool and persist so cheerfully.

It’s not always plain sailing.  One day I said my little spiel to a plumber come to mend a radiator leak and he replied, in broad Lancashire, “tha’ll have trouble wi’ me then lass, ah’ve got toffee in’t mouth”.  But we managed.

 

 

 

 

 

Because there are so many things I can’t hear I’m semi-constantly aware that my life is not quite like most other people’s. The big example of course is speech. I’m aware of people around me speaking all the time but I know that I can only understand what they are saying if I tune in, look at the speaker and concentrate.

I know that, and I’m used to it. Life goes on. But sometimes things happen to remind you of things you are missing that you’d forgotten all about. An example happened in the Post Office in the other week. To set the scene, in our household my husband does a weekly online grocery shop but I do the shopping, in our local town, for things I want to see before I buy them (things like meat, fish and fresh veg). I enjoy going round the shops and my husband doesn’t so it’s a very good division of labour. Also, I can do it and scarcely feel deaf at all. Shopping is quite easy for a lip-reader, I find, because the script is so limited. At the supermarket checkout the operator might say “would you like help with your packing?” or “do you need any bags?” or “do you have a club card?” I’m expecting all of those and just have to lip read (or guess) correctly which one they have said and bob’s your uncle. In a confident mood I might even start a short chat about the weather – again, you know where the conversation is going so it’s easy to keep up. In the butcher if you state what you want clearly enough – “lean lamb for a casserole please, about a kilo” – not much else needs to be said until they say the price, and that’s fine because it shows on the till in front of you. No lip reading needed. Perhaps another “would you like a bag?” and you’re done. Success. “Thanks a lot….bye” and you’re off.

But on this day my husband was with me for some reason when I needed to go to the Post Office for some stamps. I said what I wanted, put my letters on the scales, grimaced at the fact that they were slightly heavier than ideal and would cost more than the standard rate….all going well. Now at this point you need to know that it is one of my husband’s most endearing characteristics that he chats easily to complete strangers of all types and on all occasions. If we are out fell walking he doesn’t just say hello or good morning to passing walkers, as most people would. He stops, and, given the slightest encouragement, he’s off. Where we are going, where they are going, by what route, where we live, where they live…..sometimes things progress for so long he gets on to describing our dog’s various medical conditions (she sometimes has to wear a boot on a back paw, so people ask)……..a few jokes added in and we go our separate ways. “What a friendly chap” they think. “His wife was a bit uncommunicative”.

So, back to the post office. I’m being served quite swimmingly and my husband makes some quick quip to the person serving me, which I missed of course. She replies and they start laughing. Then the other person serving (it’s a counter in a corner shop – they aren’t behind screens) says something else, then someone else in the queue joins in and they are all laughing. Funny quips pinging backwards and forwards. It was lovely, but goodness knows what it was about. Experience tells that asking for a lip readable running commentary on a quick joke is the road to madness, it just doesn’t translate.

So, a forgotten thing. How other people shop…….