Talking "tiny", mumbling, and/or unclear lipreading

No, this is not about little people who mumble at high speed. ;) This is about a certain kind of people who fall into the unfortunate category of "Impossible to Lipread".

Those who fall under the column heading tend to:

• mumble


• whisper


• talk in low voice


• wear very bushy mustaches


• thick accents (usually foreign)

I have tricks to help me build "lipreading habits" with everyone. What I meant by that is once I figure out how a certain person would pronounce words, I can get into their habits and be able to lipread them more effectively. This does NOT mean I lipread flawlessly or understand better than 60% most of the time. I have yet to meet a deaf person who can lipread flawlessly, never mind that Sue Thomas, the deaf FBI agent.

I once knew a young guy who had this habit of "lisping" the f sounds with the th sounds, like saying "are you death?" instead of "are you deaf?" upon meeting me for the first time. Then about 10 years later, I had a manager who kept saying "bof" instead of "both", which I understood clearly because of my prior experience with that young guy. The weird thing was, I was told this is how some black people talk (which I didn't know at the time)...and this young guy is white.

The point being, people have their ways of saying words, accents or not. I lived in the South (have relatives who still does), in the Northeast (upstate New York), and the Midwest. The worst/impossible accent for me to comprehend? That would be Russian or Slavic accents, which totally kills my ability to lipread.

I've had to deal with new people each and every time I meet when they do not know how to sign. It's literally a pain in the butt when I have a new class and I have to build on the lipreading habits. The environment in a classroom is socially rigid - I can't just jump in and say, "Excuse me, I missed that...can you repeat?" over and over. The roll call is always the best way for me to begin my building process because I can pick out my own name as a teacher goes down the list of students...until I hit the wall in that teacher.

I was in my first year of community college and I initially thought I was in the wrong room for an English-related class (I believe it was Literature or some advanced writing) because I was only 18 and everyone else looked to be in their 20's or older. I sat down in the front row to give me the vantage point. An old woman shuffled into the room and she had the shakes from advanced age. When she spoke, her lips barely moved and she kept licking her lips to moisten them.

I sat there, blankly looking at her. Not one word was discernible. Then she pulled out the attendance sheet and...I knew that I wasn't in top half due to my last name and I stared hard at her mouth. Uehj owme? Lieg ahl? This went on like this and I kept staring for my name, knowing fully well that she would say my name again if I "missed" it and I'd get to jump in...

I understood NONE of anything, not even my own name. I waited until after the class to talk to her and I introduced myself. She said something I didn't understand. I talked with her some more, but I was going nowhere in terms of understanding her at all. I started to freak out and I said something about having to go and I left.

I sweated about going back. How was I going to get through the second day, let alone the whole semester?

Second day. I sat in the front row again. My heart was beating wildly. A different teacher came in and explained that she is the substitute teacher. She said the original teacher needed surgery and would not be coming back for the semester.

Wait a minute...I understood the substitute!

I breezed through the semester with her and I even signed up with her for another class the following semester. :)

Story series - trying to blend in anonymously, part one

Gillian, from A Daft Scots Lass blog, made a comment on my "That Was It?" post which helped inspire me to post another story. She said, "This story really made me smile. I love to hear of bullies getting what they deserve." and that stirred a memory from high school. I had three bullies at my high school and I remember them all clearly. That's why the title of this post is "trying to blend in anonymously, part one".

I had made a mistake of putting myself on an accelerated pace of Algebra in 8th grade (I was trying to compete with other students for "first place" that existed only in my mind) because I found myself in 9th grade Algebra where it was normal to have two or three sections assigned daily. Why was that a mistake? I didn't understand what was going on, let alone learn effectively...and to exacerbate the matter further, I felt like a fish out of the water.

Didn't help that I was the lone deaf student in that class. A student took advantage of that. Never forgot him...his last name was Nugent and he made a big deal out of that by wearing Ted Nugent shirts. Never was related to Ted...he couldn't possibly have since his actions were more on par with the Neanderthal than with the homo erectus or even homo sapien.

Each and every time the teacher turned around to write things down on the blackboard, Nugent would try to bother me. At first, it was easy to ignore him because he tried to talk to the back of my head. Hello...I can't hear you...and you're in this class? Wow.

He finally figured out that he had to touch me in order to get my attention and that fed his feeding frenzy. I could tell that he wasn't being friendly to me - laughing at me and looking at his friends for encouragement is a dead giveaway. I tried to pretend to stare blankly at him as he either mumbled at me or spoke rapidly on purpose. That didn't work. I tried to ignore his taps on my back. Didn't work. Even tried brushing off his "touches". Made him more motivated than before.

I had to report Nugent to the principal when the teacher didn't believe me on what was going on. Nugent claimed that he was trying to help me understand whenever he talked to me. He was only reprimanded and the teacher was ordered by the principal to move Nugent to the opposite side of the classroom. Remember, this was the 80's. No suspensions, no detention hall, nothing.

Nugent kept bothering me in the class. He learned from one of the students that waving arms was an effective way to get my attention from a distance. He would laugh and wave his arms at me. I was extremely frustrated and that made it inifinitely harder for me to learn. The problem went away only because I was struggling too much to learn anything and I was moved to Intermediate Algebra.

That, was the "lightest" instance I had involving the three bullies in high school. I never interacted with Nugent again after I was reassigned to Intermediate Algebra. My sister moved on to 9th grade the following year and I found out from her why Nugent had disappeared. He got in trouble with the authorities over drugs and his parents moved away to avoid the shame.

Next Wednesday, I will write about Bully #2. Be sure to come back next week!

Who needs sound to know what's going on around you...?

Emmy (of her fabulously philosophical "Right Turn Without Signaling" blog) left a comment on my post about stopping my mother dead in her tracks - "As my daughter's teacher always reminds parents who are baffled by the fact she's deaf but missing nothing, there are a lot of things that happen where you don't need sound to know it is happening. This is a great example of this."

Emmy, as I said in my response to your comment, you are absolutely right. However, the depth and the scope of how we miss nothing hasn't been explained...until now.

While I was standing around after getting my tattoos, the artist was trying to find something and I knew exactly what she was looking for. I got a piece of paper that was taped to the chair and handed it to her. She was surprised because that was exactly what she was looking for and she didn't say a word to anyone.

How did I know? First of all, she turned the chair around. The paper came into my view and it was a drawing of a tattoo that my wife wanted on her body. Then the artist rearranged her tools and accessories. After watching her be satisfied with her arrangement, I saw how her head came up and her eyes rested on the spot where the paper had suddenly "disappeared". She started looking around for it.

Easy as putting two and two together. There are other moments that have astounded even my wife who has witnessed my observation powers. Such as?, you ask (as I knew you would LOL).

Recently, my family and I went to our older daughter's school for "Trunk r Treat" where people would give out candy from their vehicles. After making our round, we went inside the cafeteria. I noticed some art, all using the same artwork. Ahh, coloring contest! My wife explained to me that each row represented each grade and each held the finalists. She pointed one out to me - it was our daughter's.

Of course, my heart swelled with pride and I thought she did a very good job compared to the rest in her grade. I tried my best to be objective and I looked over very carefully each art in her grade. 8 total out of over 70 students. 4 were marginally good or worse. I thought hers was either best or second best. I looked over all other finalists' art.

Then we all sat down to mingle with everyone else. Not long after, I saw a woman pull a single artwork off each row and then stand in front of the crowd. I realized that the woman had picked winners...and my daughter's artwork was still on the row. I was disappointed by that. My wife waved at me to get my attention and told me they're ready to announce the winners.

I told my wife "That woman already has picked winners and our daughter didn't win. Shh, don't tell her." My wife looked at me like I had no idea what I was talking about. The woman started announcing the winners by each grade. My wife asked me how I could possibly know that. Just as I finished explaining my observations, the woman announced the winner for my daughter's grade and my daughter did the "Oh man I didn't win!" face.

At least she was a good sport about that. I was proud of her for that and I told her so after we left.

Story series - Blood blister'd hand

Editor's note - I thought I had this scheduled to publish. My apologies to those who were expecting my regular post.

I was rather a wild child growing up. That's how people saw me. Why was I wild? I just didn't understand the societal expectations placed on me and the norms I was supposed to follow. Nobody had ever taught me...I figured almost all of that on my own. Bear that in mind when I tell this story of the blood blister'd hand.

Sometime in the day somewhere far away from the house, I had this undefined feeling deep down in my belly that I was in trouble. Didn't know what or why. Just knew. I never liked coming home and get spanked for what, to my underdeveloped mind, was no reason at all. Never liked having my parents administer corporal punishment to me and then say to me, "You know what you did!" No explanation. How was I supposed to know what I did when I didn't understand the expectations and the norms?

I decided that I would protect my butt from the inevitable sting of a parent's hand, but how? My young mind deduced that the rocks, when I'd fall on them, hurt A LOT...so, the rocks would hurt the hand that "fell" on them. Perfect. I gathered up a whole bunch of small rocks and stuffed them into my back pockets. Then I got up and went home.

Sure enough, my mother came to the door upon hearing my entrance into the house. She grabbed my arm before I could say anything and spun me around so she could swing her hand down to spank me. Thud. Not "thwack!" I felt the rocks push into me and that hurt a little. Surprised me...how the rocks hurt me...but I was more surprised by my mother's reaction to my "butt protection".

She howled in pain and held her wrist as she tried to shake the pain off. Perfect, my idea worked. She ran into the kitchen to soak her injured hand in cold water to help relieve the pain.

She never spanked me again. That was my entire recollection of this episode. When I told her about how I remembered this moment while discussing the demerits of corporal punishment few years ago, she told me something else had happened that day. The rocks were pointy enough and she had hit the rocks hard enough that she developed blood blisters on her hand. She confessed that she was too scared to spank me since then.

My idea worked too perfectly. I felt bad about that, but we all are able to laugh about it now.

Story series - Got busted on a plane!

Editor's note - the Story series will be published on Wednesdays unless that is too close to the date of a holiday.

Because I was attending a college with excellent resources for deaf students 800 miles away, I fly often. I have been flying since I was just few months old in my mother's womb, so I knew the whole drill.

Buy a ticket, find the correct gate, introduce yourself to the personnel as a deaf traveler so they can tell you when it's your turn to go in, wait until they tell you, go into the plane, find your seat, stow your stuff, sit down, put your seat belt on, pick up a magazine, get some gum out (helps with the pressure in my ears), and wait for the flight attendants to do their choregraphed demonstrations.

This time was different. I got a seat by the wing exit door and an attendant came over to where I was sitting. She started talking to everyone who was on my "row" about the emergency procedures and I couldn't believe how I actually understood every single word she was saying.

After she was finished with her instructions on how to operate the emergency exit doors, she asked if everyone understood. I nodded at her and she caught that. She looked straight at me and said to me, "I need you to verbalize that you understand."

Busted. I grinned at her and quickly thought over on how to say something without giving myself away. The word "understand" was too long. No. "No problem", again too long. Ahh! A small word that I can manage. Three letters long, perfect.

I said, "Yes" as clearly as I could. She went, "Ah, you are deaf. Come with me" and she swapped my seat with another closer to the front of the plane. Smart lady. ;)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Here is a surprise video below...



We just signed "Happy Thanksgiving (to) You". Yes, that's me (remember my fave shirt? LOL)...and I originally set out to do this solo but my younger daughter WANTED to do this with me. Fine with me! ;)

Formspring Q & A #12

Q: You seem to be an intelligent man. What's your IQ?

A: Thank you. To tell you the truth, I honestly don't know...been decades since I was "officially" tested, when I was 18. The IQ test, at the time, measured me at 126 or 128. I took one online, few years ago and I scored 143. I think. I know that having an IQ of 130+ puts me in "above average" or higher. What's amazing about that is I am deaf and I cannot pick up on things aurally.

Editor's note: Feel free to ask me more questions, but I have disabled Formspring due to its unreliability factor. People have told me they sent in questions and I have no way of knowing if I got all of the questions. This post is THE LAST QUESTION that has been answered...if you do not see your question in here, you would have to e-mail me (check my profile for my e-mail address) and you can ask that I not credit you if you do not want anyone to know it was you.