The next phase.

I spent several years even before starting school going to a deaf school and speech therapy. My parents were determined that despite the hearing loss that I would have as normal life as possible. I learned to read fairly early because the basics of speech therapy is looking at letters and then sounding them out. To this day I still have trouble saying the “S” sound.

When I started elementary school I spent half of my time at the deaf students classroom and half of my time in the mainstream classroom. It was really weird because I wasn’t totally accepted by the deaf kids because I had some hearing and didn’t know sign language very well. My parents wanted me to learn to speak and not depend on sign language at all. I did learn to lip read and depend on that along with my hearing aid. I wasn’t accepted by the “normal” kids because I was deaf in their eyes.

I can say that I never enjoyed going to school because of that.

I can’t tell you how many battles that my parents had with the school district over my schooling, speech therapy, and sick days. One of the school’s so-called psychologists tested me and said that I seemed bright and smart but because of my hearing I would never finish school above the 5th grade level. (All because I couldn’t hear very well). Well World War 3 was unleashed on that person.  I do owe mom & dad a huge thank you, because of them I have a great life now. I wish I could go back to that psychologist and say “Boy, you sure misjudged me. Good thing my parents didn’t listen to you!”.  I wonder how many other parents he told that to and they believed him.

Since I was a kid that caught EVERYTHING known to mankind I spent a lot of days at home sick. Bob Barker entertained me daily during those times and books were my best friend. They were always ready to take me to some faraway and exciting place.

 I eventually got used to hearing aids but having them comes with quirks. Back then it was notorious to break on a weekend when everyone was closed. Or we would run out of batteries because we got a bad batch. It is basically like a really high maintenance girl. Think of owning a car with over 100,000 miles on it. You know it is going to break down and that it usually does at the worst time.