Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself.
Harvey Fierstein
With my schoolwork under control, I began to take an interest in a social life. Every Friday night, Carlos and I went to the school dance. I had learned to dance and socialize at Central Institute for the Deaf. With Carlos around, it was easy to make friends. We fooled around, flirted with the girls, and danced. It was great fun.
At one of the dances I noticed one of the attractive cheerleaders and decided to ask her to dance. When I greeted her and asked her if she’d dance with me, she froze, looked at me, and said, “I don’t want to dance with a deaf person!”
I was devastated. I left the dance immediately and went home. I cried. I was crushed. Never had I been rejected so bluntly. Through my tears, I told my parents I would never go back to school. I was through.
My father listened quietly and then asked, “Do you know the girl?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve only seen her around.”
“Why do you want to dance with her and not someone else?”
“She’s the one I wanted to dance with. She’s pretty.”
“You are telling me that you want to quit everything because of one girl? Guys get ‘no’s from girls all the time. Still, the same guys will get ‘yes’s from others. Don’t expect everyone to say yes to you.”
“But she is pretty and I really wanted to dance with her!”
“But there are many other pretty girls.”
“But I wanted to dance with that one.”
“Do you really know her and what kind of person she is?”
“I don’t know her at all but I’d like to get to know her.”
“Are you going to forget everything at that school because of that girl?”
I felt a little silly for threatening to quit school. But at the same time, I didn’t like the feeling of being rejected. My father went on: “There will always be people who won’t have anything to do with you because of your deafness. You will always meet people like that. You can’t throw away your future over one girl you don’t know at all. People who reject you because of your deafness have their own problem: insecurity. You don’t need to associate with people who are ignorant and insecure. She must be very ignorant. There are many more people who would love to dance with you. I think you should go back to the dance.”
This was typical of the way my parents or Dunbar responded when my deafness led to a conflict. They refused to let me feel sorry for myself and explained that the cause was a problem with the other person. The parents of some of my deaf friends took it personally when a friend or acquaintance said something negative about their deaf child. They felt injured, almost a victim. My parents never adopted this attitude themselves and steered me away from it as well. It left me feeling more confident about myself and who I was.
In this case, I knew my father was right. I agreed with him and went back to the dance. No one but Carlos knew I had been gone for an hour. He told me he had looked for me and asked where I was. I explained a little but said I’d tell him later. And we danced on.
A few weeks later, we had an impromptu dance contest. As couples danced, other dancers stopped to watch the best ones. At the end, the best duo received an ovation.
I happened to be coupled with one of the best dancers in school. As we danced, other students began forming a circle around us. They watched and cheered us on. I remember thinking, “I wonder if the pretty cheerleader is watching with envy.”
At the end of the dance, Carlos ran up to me. “I don’t believe it, Paul,” he said, jumping up and down. “You really dance the best. Now everyone will want to dance with you!” Carlos tended toward the dramatic, a trait I loved in him. Not only was he fun, but his exuberance made it easier to communicate with him.
Some of my friends asked how a profoundly deaf person could dance at all, let alone maintain the rhythm that is essential to dancing. So I told them the secret: deaf people can feel the vibrations of the music through the floor. All one needs is a sense of what to do with that rhythm. I also have to give credit to CID for all the dance lessons, dance nights, and even proms we enjoyed there. Many of my friends at CID were fantastic dancers.
The big problem I experienced at the Lincoln dances (and later in high school) was speaking to other people with loud music in the background, which drowned out our voices. I had the advantage in being able to lipread, as you can imagine, but I had to learn to talk louder so I could be heard. I was never comfortable talking so loud. It took a lot of energy, so I began to enunciate more and use more gestures. Sometimes I stopped using my voice altogether. In this way, many of my hearing friends learned to lipread, often without even realizing it. After my triumph on the dance floor, it seemed many students tried harder to understand me. (I would like to be able to say that the story ended with the cheerleader and me having a passionate childhood romance, but things turn out that way only in fiction.)
Due to our chaperon, the aptly cast Mrs. Burdette, those dances would have made a great comedy skit. It was hilarious watching her wield her long blackboard pointer as she marched between the dancing couples, prying apart the ones she deemed to be too tightly wrapped around each other. On Monday morning, she was back in class, raving about Goldwater.
One day, halfway through that first semester, Carlos suggested that I run for the student council. I thought it was a great idea. My parents agreed. Being on the student council would give me more opportunities to make new friends and meet people. It would also improve my self-confidence and public speaking. But my real reason for running for the council was to see if I could really do it. I was driven by the feeling that I had to prove to others that I was as capable as anyone at the school. In the back of my mind, I was always comparing myself with everyone else.
The biggest obstacle was Mrs. Burdette, who was the adviser to the student council. She was in charge of the council meetings, even though she gave the president, vice president, and three committee seats de facto freedom to run them. Even without her blackboard pointer, she still had the leverage to approve or disapprove everything the council did. I decided to run for the president’s position and turned in my application. Mrs. Burdette flatly rejected it, saying I could never do the job because of my speech. Some of the main duties of the student council president were to lead the pledge to the flag and school prayer, as well as read announcements over the public-address system.
Carlos was more upset than I was about Mrs. Burdette’s decision. I thought it made sense, but then she turned down my application for the vice president position for the same reason. She tried to convince me that when the president was absent, the vice president had to make the public announcements. She told me my speech was just not clear enough for everyone to understand. I was disappointed but I halfway agreed with her.
When I look back, I see that I might have worked out a plan for someone else to read my speeches into the public-address system or to interpret for me at student meetings. But my confidence in my position in the hearing world was by no means 100 percent. I had been in school for only one semester, so I thought I would wait and see. I didn’t want to jump into anything too fast. In the end, Mrs. Burdette advised me to run for one of the three committee seats. I accepted that. I didn’t really want to have to speak a lot during the meetings anyway. Whereas at CID I had been a great talker, here I was going to have to start out as a listener.
I had fun campaigning. I had no trouble smiling, shaking hands, and patting everyone on the back. My friends and I put up posters and even hung a sign around the statue of Lincoln that read, “Student government of the students, for the students, and by the students.”
I swept the election, much to Carlos’s pleasure and amazement, with 95 percent of the vote. I was a little disappointed when the excitement of the campaign and the election were over. I liked getting involved with people through the student council. I didn’t feel left out at all, because I understood nearly everything that was happening in the student council meetings, even though I didn’t get it word for word. It’s true that Mrs. Burdette treated me like a deficient. But the other four students on the council always gave me my fair share of responsibilities.
The best part of the student council was meeting in the principal’s office every morning to participate in the announcements, the pledge to the flag, and the school prayer on the public-address system. I was right there lipreading everything and was able to read from the paper what the speakers were reading aloud. That was a contrast from sitting in my homeroom every morning, not able to hear the loudspeakers at all!
I wondered what Mr. Chase, who thought I belonged at a school for the deaf, thought when I was elected overwhelmingly to the council. I wondered what he thought of my straight As as well.