Navigating the Hearing World
By Paul Sommer `98

When I was eighteen months old, my baby-sitter noticed that I did not flinch to a balloon popping right by my ear. My parents took me to several doctors for tests which concluded that I had a profound hearing loss. Making matters worse, I was diagnosed as prelingually deaf, a condition attached to those who are born or become deaf before learning language skills. The cause of my deafness is uncertain, but is suspected to be genetic or a result of birth defect.

My parents had two options which would decide the fate of my identity: teach me their native language, spoken English, or the language of the Deaf, American Sign Language. Granted, signing is significantly easier, but I would have been limited to the deaf community. My parents chose the more improbable route, oralism. With the help of a dozen hearing and speech therapists, I was taught how to hear and speak. With oralism, I saw that I could not be limited by any means; there was no such thing as an impossibility in life. I learned to enjoy life as it is.

It took hours to learn how to hear and speak, and I wince as I recall the daily speech lessons. I began by learning to hear and speak vowels and consonants of the alphabet without hearing feedback. Slowly, my lessons progressed on to simple words with only one syllable such as hat, cat, and bat. After years of work, I was practicing more challenging words and sentences. In order to learn how to hear, my parents and therapists usually covered their lips and asked me questions such as, "What time is it?" Covering their lips forced me to use my residual hearing through my hearing aids. It was beyond frustrating not being able to understand a word at first, particularly at the age of 6 when I did not know why I was cooped in the room being drilled rather than being outside playing baseball like most other kids. Even worse, I had to learn the whole process of hearing and making sounds before even learning English.

I came to Haverford because I saw that, given the Honor Code and the Quaker tradition, people at Haverford see me as no different from others. These two aspects have made my life at Haverford much easier than other environments which are often full of discrimination. I also chose Haverford for some of the same reasons my classmates did; its small classes, outstanding faculty, and caring students. These qualities make it much easier for me to live in a hearing environment.

Every day, I experience obstacles and rewards. While the average deaf 21-year old like me has a reading level of a twelve year old, my reward is the ability to read over 500 pages of college books a week. The obstacles include the inability to understand every word in the book because I can not hear every word, thus, my vocabulary level is deemed lower than the average American student. I must read twice the amount that my Haverford classmates do because I do not hear everything they do in the classroom. In fact, I only understand half of the words the professor says. Lip-reading, in order to supplement my hearing (my hearing aids help only minimally) is so difficult that I must guess the other half of the words. Doing this for an hour to two-and-a-half hour long lectures is exhausting. Yet I refuse to have an interpreter because I have too much pride. An interpreter would nullify all the work that my parents, speech therapists, and I put into learning how to hear and speak. I do benefit from the use of note takers which allows me to read the professor's lips constantly without having to look down to take notes. I often resent it when classmates seem to never pay attention, but they can hear every word whereas I must sit up and push myself to lip-read the entire lecture or discussion. But all bitter feelings disappear once I speak up in class and have all of them, or most of them understand me.

Being on the baseball diamond, in the hockey rink, and on the basketball court is my escape from the constant obstacles my deafness imposes. Despite constant yelling, the opposing team and its fans fail to distract me on the mound or behind the plate. Playing baseball is the only thing that I truly love doing where my deafness hardly gets in the way. I not only play baseball for the love of the game, but as a way of proving myself. As the catcher, I am the on-the-field communicator, directing where the ball is thrown and where the players are positioned. Through signs, I can overcome my deafness and be like any other player. Being part of the team, respected as a teammate and friend, especially by hearing people, provides no greater feeling.

Yet, this respect and acceptance does not come easy. First, I had and still need to prove myself as a baseball player. The pitchers must have confidence in me as their catcher; it takes extra effort to show them that I belong behind the plate. Second, it takes extra effort to be regarded as a friend off the field where I do not have baseball to prove myself. At a baseball party, the team decided to do the conga dance to another dorm while singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame!" I do not know the words to this song because I could not hear it. Even worse, I can't sing! I enjoyed watching my teammates having fun, but deep down, I felt rejected. But I cannot expect my teammates to sacrifice everything for me. I must sacrifice a lot in the hearing world.

Not only do I need to sacrifice a lot to be on the baseball team, but also to maintain friendships. Often people would ask me if I'd like to go to the movies, but I never go because I cannot understand the words. I cannot participate in discussions about music. I cannot even follow a simple dinner conversation in the cafeteria unless I am eating with only one or two people. As a result, I sacrifice a great deal of social potential which would be much easier in the deaf community. In the cafeteria, I can't always ask my friends what people are saying at the table. When I do ask, people often get annoyed and say, "nothing... don't worry about it." At times, when I feel like talking, I often end up saying the most random things because they don't fit in the conversation. I often feel like an outcast not only on the baseball team, but in the cafeteria, at parties, and even in the classroom.

I survive socially by maintaining a good sense of humor.Once, my hallmates and I were watching "Reality Bites" in the customs suite with the captions on so I could read the words on the bottom of the screen. During a sex scene, the captions read, "Heavy breathing and panting." Everyone laughed. I didn't find it funny because I was used to watching closed captioned television. I said, "Hey, I have a right to know what it sounds like!" This quote became the quote of the year on my floor! When faced with an obstacle, my sense of humor becomes a security blanket to cover the frustrations of being deaf.

It takes a great deal of patience, frustrations, and hard work to survive as the first deaf person at Haverford. But being deaf has instilled me with competitiveness, a hard work ethic, and strong motivation to accomplish this mission of mine. I must earn good grades, I must be a starter, if not, the star of the baseball team, and I must know how to have fun in order to do it. Being able to accomplish these helps prove myself. Despite the obstacles, the rewards are far greater.

This is not meant to be an article to inspire people or seek sympathy. As a deaf person, I am culturally different. If I could take a magic pill that would make me hearing all of a sudden, I would not. I am proud of who I am.