The Silent Life

Sliverfox said:
I think as my husband ages(80) he just doesn't want the fuss of hearing aids.
He's learned to 'cope' by turning to me IF I'm with him,,,,"What am I missing?" look .
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I have that look. I give it to my daughter quite often when I know there is a conversation going on and I am unable to read the lips because there are too many people discussing at one time or someone who is talking just is moving around too much.
 

Going through 50 years of life in total silence one would think that would be totally miserable and very hard to adjust to daily living.

Here are just some things I had to do a bit differently growing up. And no my life was far from miserable.

As a very young child/toddler there were no bed time stories read to or a musical mobile hanging over my crib because at that really early age of life I did not understand ASL and also when I was very young my mom was just learning it as well. So things she did to help me relax and put me to sleep were with other senses. Calming photos, touching soft things like soft stuffed toys, certain smells that would help me relax.

As I became older and started learning sign language, I also wanted to watch TV like other kids did. Well that was not as easy for me to do. I had to also learn how to read words a lot quicker than most kids because that is how I got my sound from the TV. From the closed captions. Shows like Sesame Street, Mister Rogers, Electric Company became my friends.

Even older in life and a huge challenge for me was learning to drive. Many people today even ask how deaf people can drive a car. Well of course there is no problem with our legs or arms or eyes it is our ears. So many ask what about when an emergency vehicle is coming. How do I know. I have to really rely while driving on my sense of sight. Like double time rely on it. Not only the normal like what the traffic is doing around me, but also my eyes are my ears as well. So if I see flashing lights I will as soon as I can move into another lane and get out of the way. When I am driving I am always checking my mirrors for things going on around me. I also have no distractions going on while driving. There is no sense for me to turn on the radio unless I turn it up so loud that it vibrates the entire car so I can feel the vibrations. I think people around me would think I was totally nuts then. :) You also think texting while driving is dangerous and yes it is, but having a conversation with a passenger while using sign language is even worse. :) Don't ever try it. In the time I have been driving I have only gotten one ticket and that was a parking ticket.

As I have gotten older and been raising a kid on my own, I have had to use different methods to waking up. An alarm clock does not work for me. So I have a device that straps to my wrist before I go to bed and I set it just like an alarm clock. When it goes off in the morning it vibrates like crazy to the point where my arm starts shaking. It wakes me up. This is a very good thing when you have a teenager who is very capable of hearing an alarm clock, but still sleeps through it because she stays up way too late on a school night and don't want to wake up early in the morning for school.

As you also are probably aware the technology of phones have gone crazy over the years. For me they are pretty useless. I can't converse on a phone like a regular person. I do use the texting which is great. These Zoom things and FaceTime gadgets don't work for me as well mostly because it is very difficult to read the lips of the person/people on the video and especially if there are multiple people on the Zoom call and the conversation is moving around from person to person making it impossible for me to read the lips.

As you can see these are just a few of the things in my life that I have had to adjust to , but certainly not enough to make it a miserable life for me.
 
Thinking of what I wrote on challenges from my life and even though they did not cause me to have a terrible life, I also want to highlight one major advancement that has really helped me at least in my life of things I enjoy.

Growing up, I always had television with closed captions which gave me the ability to watch TV programs that I wanted. This was not the case with new movies that came out in the cinema. There was not a special cinema for the deaf community that showed all the new films with closed captions or even one theater within the regular cinema that showed them that way.

Now with all these streaming services and some even streaming brand new movies, I have that at my will to watch in the comfort of my home with closed captions on whatever movies I want to watch. Movies are something that the deaf and hearing impaired really enjoy as much as the regular hearing community. Even music, believe it or not is something we enjoy and I will get into that in another post as that is something that deserves a post for itself.
 

Silent Rose said:
Thinking of what I wrote on challenges from my life and even though they did not cause me to have a terrible life, I also want to highlight one major advancement that has really helped me at least in my life of things I enjoy.

Growing up, I always had television with closed captions which gave me the ability to watch TV programs that I wanted. This was not the case with new movies that came out in the cinema. There was not a special cinema for the deaf community that showed all the new films with closed captions or even one theater within the regular cinema that showed them that way.

Now with all these streaming services and some even streaming brand new movies, I have that at my will to watch in the comfort of my home with closed captions on whatever movies I want to watch. Movies are something that the deaf and hearing impaired really enjoy as much as the regular hearing community. Even music, believe it or not is something we enjoy and I will get into that in another post as that is something that deserves a post for itself.
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Our house when I was a child was not a nice place.. I've told this story on here before so I shan't repeat it.. but we had a huge family, siblings, half siblings, cousins galore..aunt uncles, grandparents..but we always had family parties..usually held in my granddads home, by one or other of my aunts or uncles, and the best and most fun parties were always hosted by my profoundly deaf relations.

They were the ones who had the most modern records in the 60's.. .. and the music was always loud so they could feel the beat through their feet to dance.. I remember them all with affection ( the parties ).. and I still have some photos of back then in the 60's.. when I was a kid and all those relations were still young adults.. great memories..
 
hollydolly said:
Our house when I was a child was not a nice place.. I've told this story on here before so I shan't repeat it.. but we had a huge family, siblings, half siblings, cousins galore..aunt uncles, grandparents..but we always had family parties..usually held in my granddads home, by one or other of my aunts or uncles, and the best and most fun parties were always hosted by my profoundly deaf relations.

They were the ones who had the most modern records in the 60's.. .. and the music was always loud so they could feel the beat through their feet to dance.. I remember them all with affection ( the parties ).. and I still have some photos of back then in the 60's.. when I was a kid and all those relations were still young adults.. great memories..
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That is how we in that community listen to music or shall I say feel the vibrations of the beat of the music. I imagine the music is turned up so loud that music hearing folks cannot be too close to the speakers. So really when listening to music for the deaf community it is the sensation of feeling that makes it happen. The vibration of the beat that can get us moving. If it is not turned up very loudly we would be so out of rhythm.

Words or Lyrics to the songs are rather impossible to hear and that is the same in the speaking voice as well. This is why, especially like myself when someone is born deaf that the language development is so off and difficult to understand.
 
Silent Rose said:
That is how we in that community listen to music or shall I say feel the vibrations of the beat of the music. I imagine the music is turned up so loud that music hearing folks cannot be too close to the speakers. So really when listening to music for the deaf community it is the sensation of feeling that makes it happen. The vibration of the beat that can get us moving. If it is not turned up very loudly we would be so out of rhythm.

Words or Lyrics to the songs are rather impossible to hear and that is the same in the speaking voice as well. This is why, especially like myself when someone is born deaf that the language development is so off and difficult to understand.
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It seems like there should be some kind of device that would allow you to feel the music without having to turn the volume up really loud... something that would pulse on your skin to the beat of the music.

After a quick search, there is something like that:
https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/219070/for-deaf-tactile-sound-system-takes-music-beyond-the-vibe

Not too attractive, but that might not matter.

I'll bet less bulky system could be engineered.
 
SeniorBen said:
It seems like there should be some kind of device that would allow you to feel the music without having to turn the volume up really loud... something that would pulse on your skin to the beat of the music.

After a quick search, there is something like that:
https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/219070/for-deaf-tactile-sound-system-takes-music-beyond-the-vibe

Not too attractive, but that might not matter.

I'll bet less bulky system could be engineered.
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This system would be great for like at home for personal use or something like that, but attending a dance where everyone would have to be equipped with something like that would be extremely expensive I think.

I hope you are right that in the future a less bulky system could be made.
 
Thanks for sharing your story. Wishing you the very best. I am also religious. If it were not for that, I don't know how I could have survived through my injuries, chronic pain, etc.
 
Jules said:
Thanks for all this information @Silent Rose You have a great attitude; it makes all the difference.
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Thank You, I never really looked at being deaf from birth as being different from others. I however growing up was coddled and kind of separated from the hearing world for the most part. As I mentioned, I attended a school for the deaf and hearing impaired. All my friends were either deaf or hearing impaired growing up. I attended pretty much all functions that were with the hearing impaired community until I started college. So I was very naive to what the real or hearing world was like up to the point of going to college. When in college they really wanted us to go out and be in the hearing community with others and that was rough, especially for someone who really never experienced much of that growing up.

Even today my experience with the hearing world other than interacting with my co-workers at work and that is limited to the nature of my job because my job is mostly an independent type job, I don't really socialize much in the hearing world.

This is the first ever attempt at a forum based group and I am pretty much taking things day to day and on a trial basis with it. I do enjoy conversing through text, but I am not 100% sure this is really for me yet. I haven't even been here a week so I have time to see. Some of my hesitation is because it is all new and I may just have to get use to it all. I am trying to do that right now.

Like I also stated, I am very naive especially when it comes to things of the hearing world and things I am not familiar with and my fear of being taken advantage of is something that is there.

So I guess what I am trying to say is it may look like I do have a great attitude and I suppose I do, but I also have my hesitations and fears mostly because in my life I have been isolated a lot from the world that most people live in.
 
I also wanted to add not only being in the deaf world my entire life because of the way I became deaf through contracting Bacterial Meningitis when I was a newborn, I also suffered from some mild learning disabilities throughout my life.

Through a lot of work from my educators and therapists while growing up I have overcome many of these disabilities, but along the way not only not being able to hear I had other challenges to face that made learning things much more difficult for me and it took me longer for most things to learn as well.

This was another of the reasons why I suppose I was isolated in many ways which I know was probably not the best thing to do, but I guess back then my mom who was raising me on her own didn't want to add any more challenges to my plate that I already had. I appreciate my mom and the sacrifices she did for me all my life and even today. I would not be the woman I am today without her.

I also give much credit to all of my hard working teachers and therapists, especially my speech therapist who when I first went to her I would not speak at all. Now even though my speech is still not wonderful and I really am still uncomfortable with it, it is much better than it was back when I started as a child. I credit that to my first Speech Therapist and the others that came after her for sticking with me.
 
Like I had stated in previous posts here and elsewhere throughout the site, I have been taking my days here on the site as a day to day trial basis.

I have never been involved in anything like this before and I am not such a social person and what I am doing here is really out of my norm. I am somewhat uncomfortable with all of this even though the way of communicating is very easy for me with text. I joined this site mostly as it stated there was no political agenda and I suppose that is monitored in some way, but honestly it is in many ways still shown through in many of the strongly opinionated posts here and it is obvious that many people on here just want to start trouble with it and I from day one stated I was neither a person that was opinionated for or against any of that tension type of topics. Maybe it is because I have been isolated from most of the real world a lot of my life and I am very naive and thin skinned and that is my problem, but my decision is this sort of thing is not for me.

I have asked @Matrix to either disable my account or ban it and whether he does that, I don't know.
 
Silent Rose said:
Like I had stated in previous posts here and elsewhere throughout the site, I have been taking my days here on the site as a day to day trial basis.

I have never been involved in anything like this before and I am not such a social person and what I am doing here is really out of my norm. I am somewhat uncomfortable with all of this even though the way of communicating is very easy for me with text. I joined this site mostly as it stated there was no political agenda and I suppose that is monitored in some way, but honestly it is in many ways still shown through in many of the strongly opinionated posts here and it is obvious that many people on here just want to start trouble with it and I from day one stated I was neither a person that was opinionated for or against any of that tension type of topics. Maybe it is because I have been isolated from most of the real world a lot of my life and I am very naive and thin skinned and that is my problem, but my decision is this sort of thing is not for me.

I have asked @Matrix to either disable my account or ban it and whether he does that, I don't know.
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sorry to see you go. completely understand. have left many, many, many, many sites, forums, message boards, etc.

take care now.
 
Silent Rose said:
Like I had stated in previous posts here and elsewhere throughout the site, I have been taking my days here on the site as a day to day trial basis.

I have never been involved in anything like this before and I am not such a social person and what I am doing here is really out of my norm. I am somewhat uncomfortable with all of this even though the way of communicating is very easy for me with text. I joined this site mostly as it stated there was no political agenda and I suppose that is monitored in some way, but honestly it is in many ways still shown through in many of the strongly opinionated posts here and it is obvious that many people on here just want to start trouble with it and I from day one stated I was neither a person that was opinionated for or against any of that tension type of topics. Maybe it is because I have been isolated from most of the real world a lot of my life and I am very naive and thin skinned and that is my problem, but my decision is this sort of thing is not for me.

I have asked @Matrix to either disable my account or ban it and whether he does that, I don't know.
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before you go, I want to send you some links about the internet and navigating through it...

I will private message you.
 
I want to thank you for all that you shared with us,
and thank you for your time and efforts, in writing the posts you did, and for all that you have added to our forum.
I am sorry you are leaving, and I will miss you, but you know what is best for you.
Take care. We wish you many good things.
 
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