a deaf person, because hearing people look at your eyes, while deaf people mostly look at your mouth. But if you look away, I can’t read your lips, and even though I have hearing aids, I lip-read too. My audiologist says that everyone lip-reads a bit, even people with perfect hearing, but most people don’t realise they’re doing it.
4) I can hear music, but I need to adjust my aids for it, and it needs to have the bass turned up.
5) When my mum asks me to do something for the third time, she can’t say, ‘Are you listening to me?’ And I can’t say, ‘I’m not deaf.’ Usually, she goes with, ‘Why aren’t you paying attention to me?’ And I go with, ‘I’m not stupid.’ A lot of people think that deaf and stupid are the same thing. That’s because they are stupid.
6) I wasn’t born deaf. If I had been, I would probably use sign language as well as lip-reading, and I might not be able to speak properly. I know some sign language, but only the basic stuff.
7) Sometimes I get tired from the effort of listening. My head starts to ache from concentrating on your mouth, and blocking out the interference from everywhere else. When this happens, I take my aids out so I can just forget about hearing for a while. If I close my eyes, you could all be on another planet. You just disappear. You’re gone so completely that I wonder if you were ever really there.
8) I’d rather be deaf than blind. Have you ever noticed how much people use seeing words in normal speech? I see what you mean, I’ll look into it. Whereas hearing words are used for when people are arguing: listen, I hear what you’re saying. I don’t mind being deaf, but I would really hate to be blind. I’ve never met a blind person, but I’d like to know if they feel the same way as me, or the opposite.
9) I sleep with an alarm next to my pillow. If the fire alarm goes off, I won’t hear it, because obviously I take my aids out to sleep. So I have a special alarm that vibrates and strobes to wake me up. It’s connected to the fire alarm wirelessly, so it goes off if the main alarm goes off. This is so I don’t burn to death, because we live on the first floor, and it’s a long way down to the street, and also there are railings. I have to take it with me when I go to stay with my dad.
10) I’ll think of a tenth thing for next time.
It was a filthy day outside. The wind was up, so the sleet was falling diagonally, stinging and vicious. I had two routes to Rankeillor: I could either walk out of New Skinner’s Close onto Blackfriars Street, turn left onto the Royal Mile and left again onto the South Bridge. Then half a mile past all the bus stops and left onto Rankeillor Street. Or I could go the other way, out of the close at the bottom, turn left past the big Catholic church, then right up the hill, past the student union buildings on the Pleasance, then eventually turn right onto Rankeillor Street just before St Leonard’s police station. On wet days, I usually went for the former. Climbing into the rain was somehow worse than walking into it.
As I walked up Nicolson Street, sharp pinpricks of cold found the few exposed inches of my skin. I bunched my hands into my coat pockets. The buildings were dulled by the rain and even the cars driving past me were losing their colour, the sleet and dirt and road salt rendering them interchangeable with the road. The pavement was greasy underfoot with frost and salt; the broken paving stones were booby-traps, poised to spray freezing water on the feet of the unwary. Even wearing a sweater and a thick coat, I was bone cold. It was only just past seven a.m., but I’d woken at five and hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. And if I wasn’t going to sleep, I’d decided, I might as well swim.
I used to go to the Commonwealth Pool all the time when I was a student, until a zealous week in my final year when I went there three days in a row, and saw the same brightly coloured M&M carcasses ground
4) I can hear music, but I need to adjust my aids for it, and it needs to have the bass turned up.
5) When my mum asks me to do something for the third time, she can’t say, ‘Are you listening to me?’ And I can’t say, ‘I’m not deaf.’ Usually, she goes with, ‘Why aren’t you paying attention to me?’ And I go with, ‘I’m not stupid.’ A lot of people think that deaf and stupid are the same thing. That’s because they are stupid.
6) I wasn’t born deaf. If I had been, I would probably use sign language as well as lip-reading, and I might not be able to speak properly. I know some sign language, but only the basic stuff.
7) Sometimes I get tired from the effort of listening. My head starts to ache from concentrating on your mouth, and blocking out the interference from everywhere else. When this happens, I take my aids out so I can just forget about hearing for a while. If I close my eyes, you could all be on another planet. You just disappear. You’re gone so completely that I wonder if you were ever really there.
8) I’d rather be deaf than blind. Have you ever noticed how much people use seeing words in normal speech? I see what you mean, I’ll look into it. Whereas hearing words are used for when people are arguing: listen, I hear what you’re saying. I don’t mind being deaf, but I would really hate to be blind. I’ve never met a blind person, but I’d like to know if they feel the same way as me, or the opposite.
9) I sleep with an alarm next to my pillow. If the fire alarm goes off, I won’t hear it, because obviously I take my aids out to sleep. So I have a special alarm that vibrates and strobes to wake me up. It’s connected to the fire alarm wirelessly, so it goes off if the main alarm goes off. This is so I don’t burn to death, because we live on the first floor, and it’s a long way down to the street, and also there are railings. I have to take it with me when I go to stay with my dad.
10) I’ll think of a tenth thing for next time.
It was a filthy day outside. The wind was up, so the sleet was falling diagonally, stinging and vicious. I had two routes to Rankeillor: I could either walk out of New Skinner’s Close onto Blackfriars Street, turn left onto the Royal Mile and left again onto the South Bridge. Then half a mile past all the bus stops and left onto Rankeillor Street. Or I could go the other way, out of the close at the bottom, turn left past the big Catholic church, then right up the hill, past the student union buildings on the Pleasance, then eventually turn right onto Rankeillor Street just before St Leonard’s police station. On wet days, I usually went for the former. Climbing into the rain was somehow worse than walking into it.
As I walked up Nicolson Street, sharp pinpricks of cold found the few exposed inches of my skin. I bunched my hands into my coat pockets. The buildings were dulled by the rain and even the cars driving past me were losing their colour, the sleet and dirt and road salt rendering them interchangeable with the road. The pavement was greasy underfoot with frost and salt; the broken paving stones were booby-traps, poised to spray freezing water on the feet of the unwary. Even wearing a sweater and a thick coat, I was bone cold. It was only just past seven a.m., but I’d woken at five and hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. And if I wasn’t going to sleep, I’d decided, I might as well swim.
I used to go to the Commonwealth Pool all the time when I was a student, until a zealous week in my final year when I went there three days in a row, and saw the same brightly coloured M&M carcasses ground
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