Apologies to Springsteen
Communicating in the dark
Autumn; Sue’s back at college learning British Sign Language (re-taking level one) and, apart from Bonfire Night, barbeques are in store.
We enjoy barbeques, I burn the food and we share the eating. For the first time since Sue lost her hearing we went to a large, social, type of BBQ – the sort where you only know a few people and the eating and drinking lingers past normal bed time. I hadn’t realised the difficulties a deaf person faced at such a gathering.
Our friends understand what makes conversation easiest for Sue – basically looking at her and not gabbling. With strangers it’s a real struggle, not anyone’s fault, just a fact. As the point of a BBQ is to eat, folk tend to talk around a mouthful of food, and, let’s be honest, who hasn’t ignored the basic rule of not speaking whilst eating when the grub’s good. Lips covered in marinade, sauce and mustard are extra hard to read although Sue quickly recognised the lip shapes for “I’ve burnt my mouth”.
Later, as booze flowed and enunciation deteriorated, Sue struggled to understand the flow of conversation, but it was the failing light that really caused difficulty. No one was being uncaring, it’s just a matter of not understanding that a deaf person needs to see to hear.
Ideally, we’d hand out deaf awareness pamphlets. Stupid, I know, but so tempting (big grin). Sue and I reckon that the simplest option would be for her to wear an ultra-bright head torch to illuminate the speaker’s mouths – again, a silly whim. What we did though, was what we usually do, stick together so I could tell her what was being said to her – people quickly got the idea about how to help Sue understand what they were saying. And the ones who didn’t make an effort? Well, they’re not worth bothering with anyway.
Sadly, communication is left to deaf people to sort out. I find it extremely distressing to see a deaf person left out of things, I’ll always make sure Sue isn’t excluded, anywhere. We need to remember that most people aren’t uncaring, they just don’t know how best to communicate with someone who can’t hear (apart from talking very loudly and slowly) I try to show an example and hope others will pick up the basics.