Listening - positively exhausting!
Listening, for a deaf person, can be positively exhausting. The level of concentration required to try and keep up with conversations is really intense, and so it is really rather splendid to be able to take out your hearing aids with a sigh of relief at close of the day, and enter into a blissfully quiet and soothing world.
Not for me an interrupted sleep caused by thunderstorms or unbridled karaoke nights in hotels – although I was once nearly burnt to a crisp in a hotel fire in Harrogate.
Propped up against my feather pillows reading a rattling good James Herriot, I languished without a care in the world, while the rest of the hotel was on the pavement in their curlers and slippers. Well… the women at any rate.
Hearing aids in this day and age are technically quite brilliant – but they still, nevertheless amplify sound perhaps more than one would want in certain circumstances, leading to sounds being intrusive and wearying. I can’t tell you the last time I heard the sweet, enchanting song of the lesser spotted grebe, but have all too vivid memories of squealing brakes, honking horns, and a few choice swear words during rush hour traffic.
Sometimes, as a singer, I hear the piano overtones too loudly and then it is a question of pick a note – any note. I am not sure in that split second if it is an A or a B and ever so slightly hysterical have to make an educated guess.
Not being able to hear the words of songs for the last 30 years, or follow a conversation on the radio as I rely on lip reading so much, or missing the punchlines on ‘Have I got news for you’ if the subtitles aren’t turned on, all bring their own frustrations.
The thing that really upsets me is that people don’t think I am paying attention - or worse still - that I am mentally subnormal. Hmm. The jury is probably still out on that one.
Not paying attention, though?! Why every nerve and sinew is positively straining to catch the slightest clue as to what is being said – body language, facial expressions, telepathy, carrier pigeon – the lot.
One develops the art of seizing on a few random words to make an educated guess at what is being said. Sometimes you get it wrong and feel an absolute idiot. A hundred pair of eyes all fix on you, and there couldn’t be a greater silence in the room if your waters had broken. You wish you were elsewhere.
My father, bless his heart, used to laugh loudly at a joke and then proceed to tell the same one. Ye Gods!
Shopkeepers raise their eyebrows when you ask them to repeat something and you valiantly resist the urge to suffocate them with their plastic carrier bags. Friends who tut and sigh with exasperation when you miss things rarely live to do it again.
So please – please – take care of your hearing. Believe me. I’d give anything to have mine back.
Janine Roebuck
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