Communication works for those who work at it.
John Powell
Any deaf person must make certain adjustments. In the days before texting, communicating by telephone was one of my most unique challenges. Most teenagers love talking on the phone, and I would have been no exception. But when I was in high school, there were no telephone devices for people who were deaf. The first teletypewriter wasn’t introduced until 1964, the year I graduated from CID. Even then, it took many years before they were in adequate service.
Yet with a little ingenuity, I used the telephone often. My parents and I developed a system for calling and relaying messages. When I had to talk to my parents, to either check in or let them know what was happening, I used a pay phone (which at the time were readily available). I put in a dime and dialed their number. Then I said hello a few times until I guessed it was about time somebody had picked up the phone. Next I said the phone number I was calling from and repeated it a few times to make sure it was written down. Then I gave my message—for example, “I need to be picked up at school at 7:00 p.m.” or “I’ll be home later than planned.” I repeated the number I was calling from one more time and then hung up the phone.
If my dime appeared, it meant the line had been busy or no one was at home, so I repeated the whole process later on. But if no dime came back, it meant that someone had answered. I then waited for a reply to my call with my hand on the phone. When the phone vibrated, I knew someone was calling back.
According to the code my family and I had worked out, if the phone rang once the answer to my message was “Yes” but if it rang twice the answer was “No.” If the phone rang three times, it meant “I don’t know.” Finally, if the phone rang four times or more, it meant my message was not understood or not complete. I had to pick up the phone and try again. This time I’d try to speak more clearly or add details I’d left out before. This system evolved during my four years of high school and was very effective. At that time, my parents were the only ones who could understand my speech perfectly on the phone.
The system never really worked with my friends. For one thing, I needed to use a pay phone, since I depended on the dime to know if I had succeeded or not. Therefore, I couldn’t really talk to them from home. Also, they had parents, family members, and others in the households who all answered the phone, which certainly would have complicated the system. Still, it might have worked out if the friend was the only one who answered the phone. Then it would have gone something like this: I call my friend and give him the phone number I’m calling from. He returns the call immediately to let me know he is there. I proceed with my message and hang up. I wait for one of the following messages in bell code: “Yes,” “No,” “I don’t know,” or “Please repeat, add more details, or clarify the message.”
I sometimes asked my parents to make a call for me. They did their best, but having one of them as the “middle man” was not ideal when things got too personal. Many friends liked my parents so much that they didn’t mind talking to me through one of them. But I was as self-conscious as any teenager, so it bothered me. I tried to keep phone talk to a minimum, sticking to the particulars involved in making dates and plans.
Only a few friends, like Carlos, felt free to call my home and strike up a conversation with me through my parents. When friends didn’t want to reveal something to my parents, they would call and make plans to meet shortly thereafter so we could discuss in private whatever we wanted to cover. All this required planning, and I was always grateful when a friend took the trouble to go this far in our friendship. Emails and texting have certainly simplified communication today!
Learning the art of complaining was another complicated process for me. In my junior and senior years, I worked on the yearbook staff as a coordinating copy editor with a girl named Eileen. Eileen and I got along well, but she loved to talk. Sometimes I grew impatient with her. One day she sat and talked with some of the other people on the staff while I wrote. It was distracting even though I couldn’t hear her. Because of my curious nature, I didn’t want to be left out of any conversation.
When I finished, I took everything I had written and everything everyone else had written to Mrs. Elliot for final editing. I complained to Mrs. Elliot that everyone else was too busy talking to come along. For some reason, she misunderstood me. She marched in to where Eileen and the others were and protested, “It’s not fair for Paul to have to write everything. You should be ashamed of taking advantage of him like that!” She held up the papers I had turned in, and I realized that she thought I had written them all, which wasn’t true.
Suddenly, I was on the spot. I tried to explain what I had meant by my simple complaint, but to no avail. Suddenly everyone was talking at once. The confusion took a long time to sort out. When I told my parents about the experience, my father said that it happened all the time. Breakdowns in communication were common even among hearing people and complaints were a frequent cause. My father warned me to tone down my complaints, to soften them before I expressed them, or they would be misunderstood in just this sort of way over and over again.
I was a bit envious about how freely some people complained. I wished that I could clean out all the garbage from my system as easily as some people did. But then I also learned that chronic complainers were unpleasant to be with and that you have to complain to the right people at the right times and in exactly the right tone, or it would create a conflict even bigger than what you were complaining about in the first place. This was a good example of having to learn through painful experience what hearing people pick up unconsciously.
The yearbook experience gave me a new appreciation of my close friends. What a relief to be able to say what I meant! I loved to complain to Carlos when no one else was around. He would react strongly and encourage me to be more dramatic. Soon I’d run out of things to complain about and feel healed and refreshed at having my say, always grateful for knowing that Carlos would not betray me.