In the whole round of human affairs little is so fatal to peace as misunderstanding.
Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
Overall, the students at Lincoln supported my being there. Many, it seemed, were affected by the friendly nature and ready smile that I employed as a tool to help overcome my deafness. In October, my second month at school, the student body even voted me most popular boy of the month. I was surprised and even thought it was some sort of sick joke. I said to my parents, “How can one thousand students know me well enough in one month to judge objectively?” I couldn’t believe they would pick me for the honor when I had only a few close friends. But I was overlooking my high profile as the only deaf student. It was the same as being Dunbar’s mascot when I was younger.
It is usually flattering when people pay attention to you, but I have to say that the difference between positive and prejudiced treatment is sometimes difficult to distinguish. Sometimes a deaf person feels as embarrassed by one as by the other. Carlos and Tom were thrilled with the vote and kept telling me to think of it as proof I had been accepted into the student body. Tom looked at it as a wonderful way of breaking down barriers and Carlos thought it was great because he appreciated adoration. He wanted the same honor someday for himself but never made it.
I kept telling Carlos that I didn’t communicate with everyone in the same way I communicated with him. “With other students,” I said, “all I did was say, ‘Hi.’ And on that basis alone they decided I was the most popular student.” He kept saying that they liked what they saw, not what they knew. Finally, I agreed to be a good sport and accept the honor. I thanked them and smiled a lot, as usual. But privately, I felt as though my conversations with most of the students were superficial.
I concluded that communication was not as treasured a commodity at Lincoln as it had been at CID and was at my home. I learned two things early on about the hearing world: one, that adolescents were more concerned with the image of a person than the content; and two, that most hearing people didn’t appreciate the art of speaking as deaf people do. At my new school, as everywhere in hearing society, communication was taken for granted. It was just a normal part of life and was not to be valued more highly than, say, grades, possessions, knowledge, wisdom, love, or friendship.
I just couldn’t comprehend this. It was such a different attitude from what I had grown up with. For the Lincoln students, communication was nothing but small talk. I felt that most of the conversations they held were below my level. I didn’t realize until much later that some of the difference had to do with maturity. I was one year older than everyone in my class and more mature for my age because of the boarding school struggles and my family environment. Being the baby, I grew up fast to keep up with my older brothers.
Carlos was a wonderful friend. With his help, I was able to breach many barriers with other students. Carlos was my “advance man.” Whenever we met new friends, Carlos would say, “All you have to do is look Paul in the face. If you talk slowly, he can lipread you, and if you listen a little more carefully, you will understand him.” Carlos understood my speech perfectly and helped me get a head start in communicating with others. If I’d had to do it alone, without Carlos, things would have been much harder for me at Lincoln. Many students didn’t know how to handle enunciating, talking slowly, gesturing openly, showing facial expressions, and lipreading. They were intimidated by my deafness and my speech. But Carlos helped put them at ease and gave me a chance to develop friendships.
Still, I couldn’t understand everyone I met, not by a longshot. Speaking styles and vocabularies were different, and each person was a new lipreading challenge. People often used words I had read but not seen on lips before. To keep my lipreading skills up with my expanding reading and social vocabulary, I reluctantly began private lipreading lessons, which I continued throughout my high school years. I didn’t want the extra work, but I recognized the importance of doing it.
A strange method of social selection began to form. I found myself preferring the company of students who were easy to lipread rather than those who were difficult to understand. It was a painful struggle to try to make friends with students who otherwise were warm, friendly, and wonderful but whose speech I couldn’t understand. It was even more painful to have to choose friends or girlfriends based on that criteria.
I couldn’t read some lips at all, and some people never could understand my speech, even after weeks of trial and error. With others, it took only a few days before we were exchanging ideas with ease. I remember one boy with whom I tried to talk. Our conversations always ended up with paper and pencil. After four years together in school, he finally asked me why all my other friends could understand me but he could not. I wrote back that perhaps he had a mental block against my speech. He disagreed, saying he thought he was willing enough to listen. Even so, speech never worked between us despite our efforts.
Even among students I talked with easily, I often felt dissatisfied with the quality of the conversation. I complained about this to my parents and Carlos. They explained that I was geared to heavier conversations and said I might need to lower my expectations. But my education had prepared me for serious conversations. I didn’t know how to make small talk. If I couldn’t understand a group of students talking, I always felt as if I were missing something important. I became envious of them. My imagination convinced me that they were discussing vital matters.
My study hall teacher, Mrs. Hunt, and I always had good conversations. She interpreted the announcements from the loudspeakers for me, something no other teachers attempted to do. I grew fond of her and looked forward to study hall and the chance to talk about all the interesting things happening at school.
One of the things we discussed was social chitchat. I complained that when I couldn’t understand a group of students and I asked them to explain, they often told me it wasn’t important. I just couldn’t accept that hearing people talked for hours on end about nothing.
Mrs. Hunt was sensitive to my frustrations, so one day she had me sit by her desk. She had a piece of paper and pretended we were discussing the paper. She wrote down all the conversations going on in the study hall—yes, we eavesdropped on the other students. And I couldn’t believe it! It was all gossip, all nonsense. That afternoon gave me an important insight into human nature.
From time to time my parents volunteered to take groups of my friends to football games and other social functions. I always missed out on the laughter and conversation in the backseat of the car, so I asked my father or mother to listen and store up all the conversations. When they told me later what had been said, I was amazed that people wasted their breath on such drivel. I realized that I was lucky to have close friends like Carlos and Tom. They were more mature than most of the others and had wonderful, interesting things to say.
On reflection, my surprise at the empty-headed conversations of my fellow students made sense. At CID we discussed important topics, issues, and ideas in order to promote our English development. We learned to pay a great deal of attention to everything being said. We were reprimanded if we ignored someone or let someone talk without listening to them. Concentration was necessary; not a minute was wasted. We treasured every word as important and valuable. Of course, we also engaged in small talk and often teased each other, but the emphasis was on local and national news, politics, and other issues that had implications for our lives.
At Lincoln, I brought a different attitude toward conversation than most other students. I was more serious, more idealistic, and more mature. Many students used their communication skills simply to enjoy themselves and make friends. Everything they did or said seemed superficial, light, even ridiculous.
Yet I wanted to be friends with everyone. I hadn’t been taught how to strike up a casual conversation. I thought, What do I say to a stranger? Once a conversation starts, how do people manage to keep it going for so long without a purpose other than social interplay? What is discussed when people stand around in groups? How can I break into a group of people, join cliques, and introduce myself? I was never sure of what to say.
I had no way of answering these questions except by trial and error. I was a proud person who didn’t want to make social blunders, so it wasn’t easy for me to experiment. I knew that deafness and isolation at CID from the hearing world had prevented me from learning about small talk. It was not hearing that I missed as much as overhearing, eavesdropping, and talking about the “weather,” so to speak.
Many times I wondered, Why didn’t CID tell us the negatives? Why didn’t they warn us of the few oddballs who would be intolerant of our deafness? Why didn’t they tell us our speech would not always be intelligible to everyone? Why didn’t they tell us that sometimes, in order to be accepted in hearing society, we would be expected to talk nonsense?
My lack of hearing had made communication so important to me that I completely overlooked the fact it could be used as a social as well as an educational tool. It was a new concept for me. My few special friends—Carlos, Tom, Mrs. Hunt, and others—helped me solve this puzzle of communication. They were my stepping-stones to understanding the new world I was entering.
Even in the familiar world of my family, communication sometimes remained a challenge. It was so nice to go home at the end of each school day—a new experience for me. Over the previous decade, when I went home from CID for the holidays, my family had showered me with attention. Now things returned to a normal state. Every evening at suppertime, my parents and I talked about our daytime experiences, ideas, and what was going on in the world. I realized what I had missed all those years away from home. I felt like I was getting to know my parents. I was now experiencing their daily lives. I knew who they were. I saw them get upset, cry, laugh, and rejoice. All of this opened my eyes.
At dinner one night, my father started talking about how much he missed David and then about how awful he’d felt about leaving Jonathan, a little five-year-old, at CID that first time. He became very emotional. Then he turned to the time I almost rejected him. I had no idea what he was talking about.
He told me how when I was seven and in my second year at CID, he and Mother had arrived at the school to take me home for the summer. When I saw them at Forest Park where I was playing, he said I had hesitated to run to them. He described my expression. To him my face had said, “Why should you come back for me when you don’t really love me?” Tears began rolling down my father’s cheeks as he described the moment. He felt that my expression showed that I had never forgiven them for leaving me at CID.
I was dumbfounded on hearing this story and seeing my father cry. I remembered vividly the day he described. What had really happened was entirely different from what my father had perceived. My parents had written me saying that they were coming on a certain day to take me home for the summer. The principal of the school confirmed the date of their arrival. Eagerly, I looked forward to that day and I counted the number of “sleeps” until they would arrive.
The day before they were supposed to come, I was playing at the park. Suddenly, I saw my parents. Apparently, they had decided to come a day early. I couldn’t believe what I saw! There was my father walking toward me with his arms open wide. I kept staring, trying to be sure it was them. When they got close, I recognized them and ran into my father’s open arms.
“Yes,” my mother confirmed when I had finished the story, “we did arrive early that year.” Soon all of us were crying and commiserating at how easy it was to misunderstand or misinterpret.
I felt awful that my father had carried that burden with him for so long—and for no reason, since what he believed was far from the truth. This experience made me think about the power of accurate communication and the consequences when things aren’t perfectly clear. The lives of deaf people—and all people—can be filled with such muddles, even when everyone tries their hardest.