Being Deaf

The tired adage: "write what you know" comes in handy tonight.

There are some truths in my life that have yet to fail. Among those are:

1. My palms and fingers get very hot when I'm bored.
2. REM, Matchbox 20, and Green Day will always cheer me up.
3. I am deaf.

I'm going to elaborate on that last one a little. I am not Deaf, capital D, Deaf. I am deaf. Lower-case, meaning that I have a profound hearing loss which affects all aspects of my life in some way. More on that in a moment.

I have heard a lot of people say, "Oh I can't hear anything out of this ear," which proves just a few things. First of all, yea... you probably can't hear anything out of either ear because it's a bar and everything is loud. (For the record, everything I ever talk about will have occur in a bar, unless otherwise noted.) Two, it's amazing the number of people that have hearing loss. In fact, it's still not certain to auditory and oral pathologists just how much people are supposed to be hearing. Many people lose hearing without knowing it, and simply adjust. And third, you're an idiot if you lost your hearing from listening to an iPod at full throttle. You deserve a slap in the mouth for whining about it, moron.

Which brings me to another point--- not exactly related to anything I've just said, but here it is. Has anyone noticed the trend of people holding their cell phones just 4-6" away from their face, and speaking to their friend on speakerphone? Give me a fucking break. It's bad enough that I have to hear half of a very inappropriate conversation, but to air out the whole thing? What are you, fucking retarded? Turn off the speaker and lift the phone all the way up to your ear. Better yet, just try to swallow the goddamn darn thing.

Anyway, back to being deaf. I wear hearing aids. Most people don't notice because of my huge penis sparkling personality. People ask some pretty fcktrd questions, but the worst of them all is, "Do you have to wear those?"
"Does it bother you?"
"Well, no, I mean, can you hear without them?"
"No."
"Oh, so you have to wear them..."
And there I am, amazed at how long it took for him/her to arrive at that point all by his/herself. (I'll be honest, usually it's guys. Women are less stupid about this kind of thing.)

Continuing on. As a deaf person I have very few statements to make. I never use the deafness as an excuse -- because it's not a disability. It enables me to focus, and filter out bullshit. So, I am like you, only better.

I do have one thing to say though. If you have a physical handicap, then you had better make it your last excuse. It makes no sense to me for someone to say, "I couldn't do this as well as you because I am legally blind!" To them I say, time to start using echolocation, batty. Honestly, why shout out that you are incapable, and then expect for everyone else to allow you the same opportunities when the first thing they'll think of is, "they are incapable." Get over it, on top of it, and if you feel like it, give it a reach-around. Just don't bitch to me about it.

Okay, so next post, I promise I will have a somewhat coherent topic that won't meander into an endless rant. It was an accident, I swear.