Listening as Hard as I Can

This post has nothing to do with writing—or anything else relevant to this blog. Too bad. I’ve got an itch, and I’ve got to scratch it.

Recently, after a four-day delay due to foul weather in Minneapolis, I finally got booked on a flight home from Seattle, where I’d given a presentation at a conference. I arrived at the airport in high spirits. Seattle’s nice, but I was ecstatic to be going home. I didn’t even mind the security nonsense, cheerfully doffing my boots and coat, lugging my laptop out of its case, digging out my toothpaste and hand sanitizer, stuffing everything into the little bins, and heading through the naked X-Ray machine thing. That’s when things went sour.

“Where’s your stuff?” the agent barked as I approached the machine.

“Right there,” I said, pointing at my bag, which was moving down the ramp nearby, behind several other bags.

At that point, he began to berate me. “I just finished saying you have to wait until your luggage goes through the machine,” he barked. “You WEREN’T LISTENING.”

The thing is, I was listening—just as hard as I could. I simply couldn’t hear him.

I’ve had a hearing loss since I was fifteen years old. The history of my hearing is complicated and long, and a story for another day. It’s been so bad at times that, without my hearing aids, I was almost totally deaf. After three ear surgeries, my hearing has improved, and with my very strong aids, I get by pretty well. Unless there’s a lot of chatter going on nearby. Or a jet is flying over head. Or cars are passing on the road outside. Or music is playing in the next room. Or someone is speaking in a soft voice. Or, or, or . . .

Hearing loss like mine can be a pain in the tush—even dangerous at times—but the worst part about it is that the world at large is so unaware of it and generally insensitive to it. You’re walking along and suddenly realize that a bicyclist behind you is infuriated because he’s asked you to let him pass four times, and you “ignored” him. Ask even the most patient of people to repeat what they’ve said for the third time, and you’ll almost always get your head snapped off. You get shouted at a lot: People just don’t get the fact that shouting doesn’t help you hear better, it just makes you feel shamed. Plus, hearing loss often strikes people as hilarious—deaf writer David Wright called it “the banana peel of disabilities.” The next time you see a situation comedy poking fun of a (usually elderly) hard-of-hearing person, ask yourself if they’d do the same to someone with a missing limb.

You know someone with at least mild hearing loss. In fact, you almost certainly know a lot of people. And you’ll be among them someday. Most people in our noisy culture start losing their hearing in middle age, and almost all older adults are slightly hard-of-hearing. If you’re lucky, you’ll have just a mild or moderate loss in your seventies, not the severe-to-profound loss I used to grapple with. But it will be bad enough.

So here’s some tips. Learn them. Please.

Never shout at a hard-of-hearing person—ever.

Never accuse a hard-of-hearing person of not listening. Believe me, they are.

Don’t ever say a hard-of-hearing person “only hears what she wants to hear” (something older people get accused of often). Hearing loss is eratic, and can be better and worse depending on factors like fatigue, stress, and hunger. Plus, extraneous noises that you don’t even notice can make hearing next to impossible for some of us. You might not have noticed the motorcycle speeding by on the street outside, but the person with hearing loss has, believe me.

Realize that hearing aids don’t fix hearing perfectly.

Don’t laugh when a hard-of-hearing person can’t figure out who is speaking or turns the wrong way when being addressed. Localizing sound is almost impossible for us: Voices often sound as if they could be coming from right or left, back or front, under the ground or over our heads. It looks funny when we stare around trying to figure out who is speaking, but it doesn’t feel funny.

What’s wrong with this scene? You see a hard of hearing person across a room. You call, “Hey, Sam!!” Sam hears your voice, but can’t tell where it is coming from. He replies, “Where are you?” And what do you answer? “Over here!” Fine. Except Sam has no idea where “over here” is because HE CAN’T TELL WHERE THE SOUND IS COMING FROM.

Speak so that a hard of hearing person can see your face. Never turn away or put your hands in front of your face.

Speak clearly. Be willing to speak a bit more loudly than you’re used to if asked.

Be patient. Even if the person has asked you to repeat three times. Or twenty.

Be courteous.

Be kind.