He is not Deaf

Huh? I replied to my dad.

That’s what happened over 30 years ago.  I had been working as a research technician at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI) after my college graduation.  I also had begun my weekly attendance at Crossroads, a bar in the vicinity of Boston University – that’s how I had become fluent in ASL by conversing with Deaf people there.  At the same time, my dad had taken a beginner class in American Sign Language at Queens College, a member of City University of New York (CUNY).  It’s also where my old speech therapist was an assistant professor.

As noted in previous blogs, I have been profoundly deaf since birth.  I still don’t know what causes my deafness – my mother had a rubella (German measles) test during her pregnancy with me, but the laboratory that gave the test lost the results without ever knowing them.  So, nobody knows if she had rubella when she had me in her womb.  However, it’s less likely, because if she had one, her affected baby would be more likely to have more than one disability (not just hearing loss, but also blindness, mental retardation, and/or heart defects).  Yet, I was born with only one disability….I think.  Remember I’m nearly 57 years of age, and don’t know if any of my minor health problems was congenital due to Mom’s possible rubella.

Nevertheless, my parents knew I had problems with my hearing since birth.  Nothing loud would grab my attention, and my parents took me around Europe (I was born in Brussels, the capital of Belgium).  So many doctors were stupid or ignorant, because they kept telling my parents that there was nothing wrong with me or my hearing.  Even one doctor sat me down, and had my back facing him.  I kept turning my head around every time he clapped behind my head, and he told my parents that my hearing was fine.  The thing is that his claps produced air to the back of my head.  D’oh!

Eventually, at age of 15 months, Dr. Edith Whetnall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Whetnall) correctly diagnosed my hearing loss at the Nuffield Hearing and Speech Centre in London and told my parents that I should wear hearing aids right away.  Right afterwards, I had my first speech therapy session, but that’s another story.

Now let’s go back to the title.  So that was the second time that someone other than my parents said I’m not deaf.  First, it was the doctors in Europe, and secondly, it was the ASL instructor in my dad’s class.  Yes, the instructor was Deaf and couldn’t speak vocally.  She had her whole class communicate in ASL, and she had an oral interpreter whenever one or more students of hers couldn’t sign well.  It began when my dad told his instructor about me – my deafness, my being oral deaf, my undergraduate matriculation at Harvard, my employment at MEEI.  When my dad finished his story, she told him that his son wasn’t d/Deaf.  Puzzled, my dad came home and told me about his conversation.  Still puzzled, I said what the hell…

I couldn’t figure out why the instructor would not see me as d/Deaf, and I continued to think she was wrong, because the fact remains that I am medically deaf.  It was 20 years something later (and after I had immersed myself in the d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing community for so many years) when I finally figured why she would not see me as culturally Deaf.  You notice the difference between deaf (small d) and Deaf (capital D) – it had nothing to do with the fact that I was born deaf, but it had a lot to do with two facts that I had attended (from public schools to Bronx High School of Science to Harvard) or worked (at MEEI) at mainstreamed institutes at elementary school levels and beyond and that I had not yet mastered ASL until after my college graduation.

OK, you’re forgiven, ASL Instructor.