Reveries

Westerns on My Mind

2011-10-10T17:12:00.000-05:00

My story is no different than that of many others who grew up with normal hearing in the 1950s and 1960s and became deaf as adults. As a kid I watched television—a lot of it—with family or friends in the living room. Back then I could hear, and I laughed or said “Omigod!” during shows at the same time as everybody else. TV was a vast wasteland perhaps, but also the quintessential American experience, a shared experience that I took part in fully.

It seems utterly impossible today but a good number of the shows I watched were Westerns. And I wasn’t the only one watching: Almost 50 different Westerns appeared on TV during the 50’s and 60’s; for years Gunsmoke and Bonanza dominated the weekly Nielsen ratings. There were only three major commercial networks then and people pretty much watched the same shows. If you’re my age, male, and don’t know who Pa Cartwright is, you might as well be from Mars.

This common cultural heritage was impressed upon me a few months ago during an email exchange with John, a late-deafened friend in my age bracket. The topic was his crappy golf game and he said in exasperation that he’d reached the end of his rope and it was time to take the 3:10 to Yuma—in other words, in the parlance of the movie of that name, put an end to things. I emailed him back, typing simply: “Johnny Yuma was a rebel.” His response: “He roamed through the West.” Me: “Did Johnny Yu-MAA, the rebel.” John: “He wandered alone.”

Those lines form the chorus of the theme song of The Rebel, a TV Western from our youth. The song was sung by the legendary Johnny Cash in his trademark languid way, and after evoking it in our emails John and I couldn’t get the song out of our heads for hours—okay, days. Increasingly obsessed, I found a video on YouTube of Johnny Cash performing the song live. John found another. Then we began digging up the themes of other immortal (to us) Westerns: Maverick (“Riverboat, ring your bell….Fare thee well, Annabelle…Luck is the lady that he loves the best…”), Have Gun Will Travel “(Paladin, Paladin, where do you RO-oam?.... Paladin, Paladin, far far from ho-ome.”), Rawhide (“Rollin', rollin', rollin', Though the streams are swollen, Keep them doggies rollin', Rawhide!”)…the list went on. And here it is months later and the songs continue to carousel through my head when I should be pondering how to find a full-time job with benefits. I’m about ready to check out the train schedule to Yuma myself.

All of this means absolutely nothing to most of you, but in a way that’s the point. Broadcast media—in this case, the theme songs of television shows—can uniquely frame and cement personal relationships. John and I would be great friends even if I’d watched Petticoat Junction instead of Death Valley Days and Wagon Train, but the fact that we both devoutly watched and, especially, listened to these TV shows before deafness came along adds another dimension to our friendship.

The 1970s and early 1980s were my own private wasteland years, when I struggled ignobly with deafness. Shame, denial, withdrawal, and fear were some of the self-directed arrows in my quiver of dejection. The lack or scarcity of television captioning during that period contributed to my sense of isolation, although I didn’t realize how acutely until much later.

Some necessary background: During the mid-1970s Saturday Night Live became a hit television show, actually a cultural phenomenon. The show gave impetus to weekend parties. On Saturday nights, friends gathered for drinks and banter and to watch the show. At least my friends did. As airtime approached they’d all position themselves amphitheater-style in front of the TV set. Trying to preserve my status as a fake hearing person at the time, I stood at the back of the room so nobody could see I wasn’t enjoying the comedy sketches, which I couldn’t hear. I’d try to will the hands of my watch to midnight, when the show ended. Needless to say, this wasn’t a high point in my life.

Flash forward to about 1990. I’m married now and my wife Karina notices that an early Saturday Night with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi was being aired.

“Oh, let’s watch it!” she says.

“Nah,” I shrug.

“Why not, Guillermo?” she says. “John Belushi!”

“I won’t understand it, for one thing.”

“But it’s captioned.”

“It’s captioned?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Okay. I guess.”

So we put the show on. About ten minutes into it, Karina throws back her head in laughter and looks at me. And… I’m crying. Megatears coursing down my cheeks.

“What’s the matter, Guillermo?!” she says.

“I don’t know. I’m crying.”

“I see that. But why?”

“I don’t know. Something…I don’t know.”

But I did know. It was the specter of Saturday nights past, when I stood at the margins of parties, full of angst and foreboding. When that particular show first aired, I probably hadn’t understood a word. And now there were captions. Belushi, yes; Aykroyd, yes: they’re funny. My tears flowed from a mishmash of sudden, unexpected feelings: distress, relief, resentment, gratitude.

That night is a moment frozen in time. I never again reacted so primally to captioning on television. Today, my attitude is probably just like yours: I expect perfection and am annoyed by recurring typos or when captioning lags behind. And when there are no captions at all, I get upset and may raise a fuss.

But I’m not likely to forget how fundamental captioning is to my sense of wholeness, community, and belonging. I watch television with my hearing family and friends, and we laugh and say “Omigod!” at approximately the same time. Maybe watching TV together is no longer a quintessential American experience (only Facebook is), but it’s still a cherished one. And when Clint Eastwood reprises his breakthrough role as Rowdy Yates in Rawhide I’ll be able to understand him, just like old times. Not that I’ll actually watch the show: I’m done with Westerns. Done. Now how do I get all those theme songs out of my head?

“...Natchez to New Orleans....Livin’ on jacks and queens....Maverick is a legend of the Wessst....”

Grim Grinning Ghosts

2010-10-21T23:29:00.004-05:00

Two weeks ago I went shopping with my son for a Halloween costume. For him, not me; in terms of net ghoul gain, it makes no sense to buy one for myself. Tony is 12 and still has a few good years of Trick or Treating left, apparently. His sweet tooth compares to the canine of ancient tigers. And he knows how to stalk and attack sugar-blooded prey, especially chocolate.

For example, when I worked at Microsoft, on Halloween the workers would leave a bowl of candy on a chair outside their office. In the late afternoon, kids of employees went from office to office putting a candy or two into Windows XP tote bags. One year Karina and I found ourselves in my office as evening came and all the kids except ours had left. Tony was off roaming, which was and still is his nature. Then he appeared with a guarded smile, dragging his two-foot-deep tote bag behind him, filled almost to the top with candy. He had made a Sherman-like march through the halls, emptying all remaining candy into his bag. The bag weighed at least 20 pounds and I had trouble carrying it to the car for him. Looking back on the four months that followed, I still ask myself why I did.

Anyway, two weeks ago we went shopping at a store called Spirit of Halloween. This is one of those places that magically sprout in an empty storefront every September and have a lifespan of two months. The store is like a wax museum of famous and legendary faces sprayed with fake blood and cobwebs. If he had a charge card, Tony would shop there all day.

But let me stop a moment here and confess something that never fails to elicit horror: I don’t like Halloween. In fact, I hate it. Yes, oh yes indeed: I hate Halloween. It’s my least favorite holiday of the year by several powers of 10.

I have good reasons. When I was 7 years old half my house burned down on Halloween night. My mother awakened me about 2 a.m. and by then the smoke filled the house almost down to the floor. I had to crawl through two rooms and out the front door boot-camp style. It was a chilly night and I sat shivering in my father’s car as the back of our house went up in a spectacular torch of flame. That was one Halloween.

I lived in a fairly tough blue-collar neighborhood. On Halloween there was always a posse of punks out to get the non-punks, who included me. Their arsenal included eggs and black shoe polish. One year my mother made me a ridiculous pumpkin costume out of hangers and crepe paper. I looked like an orange Michelin Man and had trouble walking, the hangers strafing my thighs. I had no chance at all against the punks; My friends got away but I got pelted. I ran home crying, egg and black streaks on my clothes and face and my costume in shreds. That was another Halloween.

My brother Mike’s birthday was on Halloween. We always could fill the piñata. In 2000 Mike contracted a rare disease and died two weeks later. I think of him the most on Halloween. That’s every Halloween.

Then there’s my deafness. Before I learned sign language I relied almost exclusively on lip-reading to understand what people said. It’s hard to lip-read a mask. Masks don’t sign, either. They just quiver a bit when the wearer yells “Trick or Treat!” and then stare vacantly at you, waiting.

But when our kids came along, I had to get with the program. My kids—like every other kid in the history of the world except me—love Halloween. So I dutifully went around with them when they were small, nodding approval when I wasn’t looking at my watch, smiling and expressing gratitude to the cheery folks who gave treats but doing a silent thumbs-up when a house we passed was dark. Without kids, that house would be mine.

My kids can be quite cute in their costumes, the only part of Halloween I like. Once my daughter was a giant mustard dispenser—voted second-best costume in her class--and last year she was a sexy pirate, which got my vote. My son has been, among other things, a jester, a ghost (for the Microsoft heist), and a vampire without $25 fangs because he lost them before he put on the rest of the costume.

This year my daughter, again living large, will be a giant crayon. She chose green as her color, a clear shot across the bow at global warming, but maybe I’m projecting. My son, meanwhile, exited Spirit of Halloween with a long blond wig and plans to go treatin’ as Lady Gaga. I gave tacit approval--Tony is characteristically brazen and headstrong, and often risqué—but, um, we’ll see.

Where I grew up, a giant green crayon and Lady Gaga on the street at Halloween would constitute open season for punks. But I live in the suburbs now, wholesome, somnolent, and safe. I could probably wear my crepe-paper pumpkin costume here and not raise any eyebrows. Well, maybe not: That costume really sucked.

The Page I Won't Read

2010-09-24T14:33:00.003-05:00

I went to a funeral the other day. My friend Tom’s father died. He was a much-beloved former principal of a local high school. The crowd at his wake snaked out the church door and down the sidewalk. The online obituary about his life and death drew many e-comments from colleagues, former students, and people who didn’t know him but wished they did. The church service and burial had gravitas.

As always happens at funerals, my mind drifted to the important people in my life who have, as my ALDA friend Larry says, “graduated”--my parents, a brother, my father-in-law, other relatives, friends from all periods of my life who died far too early in their own life. Death happens.

I’m not particularly phobic about death. I’ve seen it up close and I don’t avoid ICUs or wakes. I’m sort of okay with my own death as long as the Cubs win the World Series first. Make of that what you will.

But one thing that spooks me is obituaries. I’ve skipped the obituary pages of newspapers my whole life. That’s not surprising when you’re young and six or seven decades of separation from death. But I’m not all that young anymore (which is surprising) and still I move gingerly around and through the section that carries the death notices.

When I was growing up, if my father wasn’t doing the daily crossword, he seemed to look at nothing in the Tribune but the obituaries. I’d walk in the kitchen and he’d have the obit listings spread out before him, a newsprint graveyard with entries arranged like headstones in columns down the page. I didn’t fully appreciate the significance of the page until I was older, but I did learn the words “nee” and “in lieu,” terms found almost nowhere else on Earth in a complete sentence.

My mother also scanned the obituaries when she wasn’t buying high-fat foods. She was our primary herald of death, telling my brothers and me when a family friend or relative had died. You could tell by the sigh in her voice when bad news was coming; it was either a death or she’d seen our report cards.

During my carefree, indestructible 20s and 30s, I did the sports pages and comics, not the obituaries. The world wasn’t particularly big back then and deaths were conveyed by phone tree; because I became deaf the tree branched to my brothers or friends, who brought me the news in person. I actually went to an awful lot of wakes those years—my parents, parents of friends, relatives, even some of my own friends, suddenly gone—but I didn’t find out about a single one of those deaths by reading the obits.

As gray crept into my beard and my 10k times slowed, my brother Bob became the new herald of death. He’s an ophthalmologist with many elderly patients, and he reads the obits religiously to keep track of them. Bob also knows most of my friends from days gone by, and provides me with secondary coverage in case I don’t hear about a death from somebody else.

Why do I avoid the obits? Why will I read every page in the newspaper except that one? Probably because I don’t want people I know and love to graduate, to die. It’s irrational and semi-irresponsible, but if I don’t see a death notice then the fabric of my life remains whole, unchanged, young. It’s the kind of fantasy world thinking you find in Faulkner and Sendak. Let the wild rumpus start.

Not too long ago I noticed that my wife was reading the obits every day. When I first realized this, I said:

“Why are you reading the obits every day?”

“To find out who died,” she said.

“Oh.”

So now I have secondary coverage in the kitchen.

Actually, Facebook and other social networks are the only secondary coverage any of us need these days. Obits have never traveled so fast. A second or two after someone dies, the news appears at the top of our queue, just above an entry like “We are sunnin’ and funnin’ in Cancun! Woo-hooo!!”

But seriously, it’s easy to imagine a site like Facebook replacing the funeral parlor, church, and cemetery as the definitive place for mourning. A status of “Dead” will trigger the ultimate wake, with comments from hundreds of Friends, along with photos, videos, and selected posts by the departed. The burial--official removal of the person’s account—will prompt a notification both to Friends and to People You May Know.

We all need to prepare for this future; we need to revise our wills with instructions on how we want to be memorialized on Facebook. After several days of contemplation, I think I’m ready to get the lawyer and the notary. When I graduate, I want my Facebook status to permanently read: “Bill Graham, nee Superstar….[yadda yadda]…in lieu of burial change Profile to say, in bold face, Summa cum laude.” And put a tassel on my virtual urn.

Out, Out, Brief Candle

2010-09-15T09:42:00.005-05:00

“What do you want for your birthday?” Karina asked when I picked her up at O’Hare recently. Karina is my wife. Her given name is Karen but I haven’t called her that in 20 years. Karina is more exotic.

“Nothing,” I said quickly, moving around an Avis shuttle that blocked half a lane.

“Well, what do you want to do?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Do you want to go out for dinner?” Karina said, exasperation creeping in.

“No.”

“What can I make for you then?”

“Nothing!” I said, eyes darting at the rear view mirror. “Nothing. Okay?”

She let out a sigh that said “What a jerk.”

“Okay," I said. "Make enchiladas. Whatever. I’m trying to drive.”

Karina then turned on the radio loudly, and she let me drive.

Although we are both half-Polish and thus agree on practically everything, Karina and I are Poles apart on what constitutes best practices for birthday celebrations. There’s no disagreement on how to celebrate the kids’ birthdays, of course--gifts, cake, candles, The Song, and immunity from being grounded are universal traditions dating back to the earliest laser tag parties in Olduvai Gorge. But our cultural lockstep veers wildly when it comes to birthdays of adult family members.

In Karina’s family, adult birthdays are Mardi Gras events that can span several days: gifts, cake, and The Song with the nuclear family; a repeat engagement with the extended family; and maybe dinner at the kind of restaurant where after the meal a posse of servers clap, chant, and snake dance around booths bearing a complimentary dessert with a sparkle candle.

In my family, birthdays pass without hoopla. It’s a good year when we remember to email one another, and a great year when we get the date right. The acknowledgement is always welcome, while the greetings go something like this: “Happy birthday, brother. Hope you have a great day. Did you get a job yet?”

Similarly, for many years the gift-giving practices of our respective families—particularly at Christmas—bore no resemblance to one another. Ironically, in this case it was my family that hemorrhaged excess.

In Karina’s family, everyone asks each other what they want for Christmas. They then go forth to stores or catalogues and buy the requested gifts. On Christmas Day the gifts are unwrapped and the recipient exclaims: “Oh my God, it’s beautiful! Thank you so much!!” “You’re very welcome,” the giver responds. “I knew you’d like it.”

In my family, on the other hand, exchanging gifts at Christmas involved surprise and intrigue. The giver might spend days or even weeks independently analyzing a person’s interests and needs before springing for a gift.

My brother Pat was the undisputed King of Family Christmas Shopping. Pat took extraordinary pride in finding the perfect, most delightful gifts for each family member. Most years he began to research well before Thanksgiving; he’d visit dozens of stores by foot, bike, and bus—he didn’t drive—finally compiling a short list of candidates over which he’d agonize for days. His final selections were always clever, unexpected, and fanciful. So fanciful in fact that upon opening Pat’s gifts at least one family member would invariably ask: “What is it?” Pat would then explain at length just why the gift was so delightful.

I ranked second only to Pat in my gift-giving efforts. I didn’t spend quite as much time shopping as he did, but I prized myself on creativity and an exquisite finishing touch. For each gift I created a riddle and taped it to the wrapping paper. People read the riddle and tried to guess their gift. It was great fun, especially when they guessed wrong.

One year, trying to out-Pat Pat I bought him a rock for Christmas. Not a glitzy souvenir-shop geode or gemstone--which I knew his nonconformist streak would find mundane--but a dull brown sedimentary stone about the size of a fist. It had numerous bicolored pockmarks and an interesting shape but was otherwise mundane, which meant Pat might like it.

I wrapped the rock in a small box stuffed with paper to make it less identifiable. Then I composed the obligatory riddle and taped it on. I don’t remember the riddle, but something like this would have been typical: “This gift is hard to guess, it came from Sly Stallone, if it hits you in the jaw, you’ll be bleeding to the bone.”

Pat pursed his lips and ran a hand through his hair. He raised an index finger in the “wait” sign, closed his eyes, and swayed back and forth, summoning his muse of logic. Finally, he opened his eyes and with a maniacal grin thrust his finger high in the air. “A ROCK!” he said triumphantly, to my dismay. But I too could claim victory: He liked the damn thing.

My family’s Christmas gift-giving tradition has, fortunately, evolved. Children came along and nobody had the energy or time for suspense. Now we are assigned one person and one person only to buy a present for. Creativity has languished; gift cards to Target are not uncommon. Nevertheless, my brother Pat refuses to observe the new rules and continues to buy unusual gifts for us all. He doesn’t have kids though, so he can be forgiven.

But back to where we started: birthday celebrations. I hate to be curmudgeonly about this. It’s bad enough to turn a year older without also turning into Andy Rooney. But unless it’s a big round-number age, adult birthday celebrations annoy me. On my birthdays I don’t want hoopla and I don’t want several encores of The Song. (Raise your candles, people...one more time!) Acknowledgment, Karina, the kids, and maybe a small cake work fine, and enchiladas would be delightful.

I Cry

2010-09-12T20:54:00.004-05:00

I cry a lot. I’m sorry, I can’t help it. Oh, I don’t mean the kind of crying where tears run down the face and leave a trail like snail slime on the cheeks, although I do that too on occasion. My crying tends to be more subtle, a gradual accumulation of mist in both eyes that calls hay fever to mind or an attack of pepper spray.

Just about anything remotely cry-worthy can get me going. (The look on my wife’s face typically says: “Oh, no…”) I probably have a hormonal/mood problem that involves low levels of endorphins. I could take pills, I guess, or stay on a tread climber all day to counteract the condition. But I choose to accept my tears as evidence that I’m human, something I try to validate whenever I can.

Although the sheer range and versatility of my crying truly set me apart, my tears most often fall into two traditional boo-hoo categories: the kids and movies. For most parents, kids are the slamma jamma dunks of crying jags. Our kids are 12 and 14 now, ages at which they figuratively drive us to tears. (I know, I know: it gets worse.) But if I dwell on memories of them as little people—the cake-smeared birthday faces, the Santa Clause letters, the unconditional nature of their affection—real tears form and can achieve snail-slime status as long as Chuck E. Cheese isn’t involved.

And it’s not just the past: thinking forward in time to the kids’ inevitable departures from home also makes me choke up. Unless I get my act together fast, I’m going to be an utter wreck when they go off to college, much less graduate. Almost any school milestone melts me. Take last spring when the kids left the house to take the bus to elementary school together for the last time. They were 30 feet apart walking down the sidewalk and sniping at each other as they always do, but my tear ducts decided this was a lachrymal event. If my wife hadn’t been there with a demeanor consistent with feeding the dogs I might have lost it entirely.

While lots of people cry at movies, few span as many genres as I do. I cry at musicals, monster movies (King Kong utterly slays me), action and adventure movies, chick flicks, disaster films, romantic comedies, utter crap (I mean, Shark Boy and Lava Girl?), every animated film made since Snow White (1937), and any movie with a happy ending, which means 95 percent of movies rated PG-13 or under, the only kind I’ve gone to for the last decade.

Probably the most brutal film on me in recent years was Marley & Me, about an impossibly rambunctious Yellow Lab puppy that becomes the mainstay of a somewhat unsettled family. I love dogs and have had many in my life. One of my special favorites was Martha, a Black Lab our kids remember as their first dog. She had a quiet dignity, intelligence, beauty, and gentleness that won everyone’s hearts, even our cat’s.

I was responsible for exercising Martha, and we played Frisbee and ran trails together for years; when she got older I walked her on the same half-mile route every night, rain or snow. The whole family adored Martha and when it came time we all huddled around the vet’s exam table and pet her as she died. When we got home my wife and I walked Martha’s half-mile route in tribute, as I wept openly.

Except for his wild, destructive puppyhood, Marley reminded me of Martha: a Lab, about the right size, about the same smile, a six-letter name that started M-a-r. The movie moved along sweetly enough until Marley started to gray around the muzzle and there was still 30 minutes to go in the film. Then it became clear where Marley & Me was heading: to Old Yeller Land. Marley was going to die, which I hadn’t prepared for.

After another ten minutes of increasing discomfort, I couldn’t watch the screen anymore. So I looked away--at the ceiling, the wall, my watch, the beverage cup. I sang songs to myself, clenched my lips, fingered my Blackberry, bit my tongue, sang more songs. But nothing helped: my faucets started running full blast. And the tears kept flowing through the credits scroll. It didn’t help that my son was bawling in my wife’s arms when the lights came up.

As we left the theater my daughter glanced at me and stopped in her tracks. Then she touched my elbow and said: “Daddy, you’re crying. I’ve never seen you cry before.” And I’m thinking: “Where have you been all these years, Sugar? No wonder I can’t get you to clean your room. I have to cry to get your attention?”

Maybe so. Maybe so. Snail-slime style.

They Said I Was High Classed

2010-09-09T17:10:00.005-05:00

When I was growing up my house was relatively devoid of song. My two oldest brothers learned piano from my mother—who could, as they say about top athletes, play—and my other brother took violin lessons. But I, the baby of the family, only made music with a baseball bat in my hands. I played a pretty mean basketball as well.

My parents just didn’t do songs. My father listened mostly to talk radio, although he loved Perry Mason and The Jackie Gleason Show on TV; mom enjoyed the run of afternoon soap operas but very little else. That was pretty much the extent of what passed for pop culture in my house. Not particularly memorable unless you liked Raymond Burr and Joe the Bartender.

We had some record albums in the basement, largely the Mitch Miller sing-along kind. I played them occasionally and learned the songs. Singin’ in the Rain, Heart of My Heart, Yellow Rose of Texas, Ain’t We Got Fun--these are the nerdy tunes that formed my musical fundament, and many of them I couldn’t get out of my head after I became deaf and could no longer make out lyrics. You might call them a follow-the-bouncing-ball form of tinnitus.

I did learn songs on my own and through my friends, of course. I liked folk singers like Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and The Kingston Trio. And when rock took off I took off with it, so the early Beatles also comprise my musical memory. The last song I remember learning all the way through with my ears was Light My Fire by The Doors. You know that it would be untrue, you know that I would be a liar, if I were to say to you that I memorized any subsequent song without seeing the words on paper. All these other songs, I like to say, are after my time.

At ALDA conventions, Saturday night is karaoke night. It’s an ALDA tradition, and many would say the hallmark of ALDAcons. Most ALDAns grew up surrounded by song, and karaoke brings it all back, often with stunning emotional force. With the support of other deafened people singing badly, even a song-deprived person like me gravitates towards the karaoke dance floor and stage. Nobody requests Mitch Miller, but Puff the Magic Dragon and Love Me Do—two very golden oldies--are universal favorites that get me going.

This year, like most years, I put in a bid to the DJ for Hound Dog, an Elvis staple. The song carries special significance for me since every time we go to Six Flags, my young son Tony does a Hound Dog solo on the karaoke stage. If the cheers and high fives he gets from the crowd are any indication, he’s quite good.

I had passed around my Blackberry showing photos of Tony doing his Six Flags gig when the ALDAcon DJ spun Hound Dog. I impulsively dashed onto the stage and grabbed the mike. Like son, like father. And I proceeded to give it my best, which basically means I sweat through my shirt and underwear.

Afterwards a number of people said “great job” and I got a few high fives. I think there might have been applause, too, but I was too busy searching for a dry napkin to notice.

It wasn’t until I got back home and saw Dave Litman’s video of Hound Dog that I realized I had been singing solo on the stage. Ken Arcia and Marylyn Howe were on each side of me playing what amounted to air guitars and Tess Crowder, a CART writer, had provided hip-swiveling dance accompaniment. But I was the only one singing into a mike. Jeez.

The whole thing blew me away. Even some hearing people had complimented me, which meant that it wasn’t just sweat that had won the kudos but also, astonishingly, my voice. They said I was high classed! In just three minutes, I had disproved the long-held notion that deaf people can do anything hearing people can do but sing.

I’ve been back from ALDAcon almost a week now but karaoke songs keep spinning through my head, a tinnitus of the soul. I have plenty of other good memories from the convention, but I have to say the Hound Dog thing is my favorite. And next year I’m going to top it and once again refute dogma. Against all odds, I’m gonna catch me a rabbit.

(Well…that was just a lie. But don’t write me off.)

Crappy Sign

2010-09-08T17:41:00.001-05:00

Several years ago I quietly dubbed my style of signing “ALDA Crappy Sign.” The term derived from the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA), where other people sign just like me, or even worse. Recently Howard Rosenblum, the brilliant incoming CEO of the National Association for the Deaf, suggested that my term be made more generic and called simply CSL—Crappy Sign Language. That made good sense and now I too refer to persistently vague and misguided signing as CSL.

I used the term CSL for the first time in a public forum last week while speaking at the ALDA convention in Colorado Springs. It got laughs, as I knew it would, but afterwards people came up and thanked me for calling a crooked spade a crooked spade. I guess it validated their own fractured efforts to sign and made their world safe for mediocrity.

For many deafened adults, there’s undeniable practicality in using CSL. When I communicate verbally with others, there are many words I can’t hear, lipread, or guess at correctly in context. In such cases, miming, exaggerated mouthing and facial expressions, and exceptional slowness in connecting signs with words—the key characteristics of Crappy Sign—often come to my rescue.

I probably speak for Crappy Signers everywhere in saying that the most important factor for understanding a conversation is pacing. We cannot, repeat: cannot, follow fast signing. Even one fast sign in a sea of pokey ones can upset the applecart of comprehension.

Most sign language interpreters don’t get it. They are trained in rapid-fire ASL, perhaps the most elegant and evocative mode of communication ever invented. By association, interpreters are elegant and evocative when they use it. And the faster they go the more elegant and evocative they become. But in the CSL universe, speed kills communication. That road kill on the ASL Highway is my brain.

I’d love to be fluent in ASL, but I never will be. If I worked really hard I could maybe move up from CSL to BSL (Better Sign Language), but I doubt I’ll find time to try. Crappy Sign will remain my native method of signing, and in my eyes it’s a beautiful place. Hands move slowly, mouths go wide, and almost always I understand. Ah, home.

Badder Than Better

2010-09-07T22:08:00.001-05:00

I have bilateral cochlear implants. One is my good CI, implanted in 1996. The other is my bad CI, which found its way to my right cochlea three years ago. In relatively quiet places one to one, I hear quite well with the good CI; with the bad one I’m lucky to make out “Daddy!” face to face in a soundproof booth.

My friend Patrick likes to put a positive spin on my CI situation, calling the 1996 model my “better” CI. But I’m more absolute: one of my CI’s is good and the other one is bad. I mean, we have two dogs in our family, a black/tan one that poops in the house and a chestnut/white one that was declared housetrained years ago. When Mr. Chestnut comes at me wagging his tail I don’t say “Better dog, better dog.” Likewise, when Mr. Black gifts me in the dining room, there is no way around the word “BAD.” So it is with my CI’s: the good one is well-trained and the bad one still poops, and very likely always will.

Anyway, I recently attended the annual conference of the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA) in Colorado Springs. ALDAcon is a love-in where people who hear badly have a remarkably good time. They do karaoke, snake dances, and other uncustomary activities and forget to be embarrassed.

Two days before the conference my good implant stopped functioning. I’m still not sure why. I had tried my best to protect it from moisture and dog drool, and our cat hadn’t batted one around in years. The good CI just up and died. I prayed for its resurrection, but when I lifted it one last time from its Dry-Aid crypt before leaving for the airport it was still lifeless.

That left me with only my bad CI for the trip to Colorado. Under the circumstances, there was no better place for me than ALDAcon. A good many ALDAns communicate badly, and others communicate worse. I wasn’t quite in the latter category because I understand slow-moving sign language (as opposed to the machine-gun form deployed by most interpreters). Nevertheless, minus my good implant, I found myself bluffing at the Con like a newbie to deafness, and tending to avoid people who couldn’t sign at all or signed too fast for me.

Eventually I put pride aside and asked people to write things down for me. And they did so, without rancor. Frankly, I understood those conversations better than many others I had using voice or sign language. It was kind of neat, actually. It evoked for me the earliest days of ALDA when Babel reigned supreme and the simple act of communicating with pencil and paper seemed so precious. I got a bit of that buzz from the paper pads at ALDAcon.

Which is not to say that I don’t want my good CI or its replacement online soon. I do. As soon as possible. Please. Because when all is said, signed, and written, I love it to death. The bad CI? Let’s just say it keeps me honest.

All I Want for New Year's Is My Front Tooth Back

2009-01-02T10:53:00.006-06:00

On New Year’s Eve my family played a game called Wits & Wagers as the hours slid toward midnight. With guests from Texas staying with us, we had seven players around the table, pushing the limits of the game’s scorecards, pencils, chips, and other playware.

Wits & Wagers is a game that the whole family can be competitive in. A question with a numerical answer is asked, players write down their answer, and then bet on the answer they think is closest to being correct. My 12-year-old daughter won one round and her 74-year-old grandmother won another. Even I won a round, which means that Tinky Winky and La La would probably have a fighting chance.

So there I am in our fifth or sixth round, sitting next to my wife and her mother and hating their guts because they’re beating me. Again. I’m vigorously chomping on a bowlful of Tostitos with Hint of Lime. “What percentage of the world’s population lives in the United States?” says our Texas emcee. As I begin my always tortured thought process, I put another tortilla chip in my mouth, crunch down, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a tooth, dislodged from its moorings in my upper mouth.

Here let me explain: In addition to bilateral cochlear implants I also have a tooth implant, my upper left front tooth to be specific. I lost my biological upper left front tooth about 12 years ago in a rather unique way: I hit my head on a tree trunk while running up a mountain.

The tree had been downed during a windstorm and had fallen across the trail, about 5-1/2 feet above it. My exercise partner Andy, who’s a few inches shorter than I am, ran ahead of me. I ran looking down at the trail to avoid tripping on exposed roots and rocks. Andy didn’t break stride when we came to the tree; he just ducked a bit going under it. But I didn’t see it coming. I hit the trunk head on and it knocked me flat on my back. Stars and exclamation points swirled above me.

“You okay?” Andy asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I guess."

“You don’t look okay.”

“No, no, I’m okay,” I said valiantly. “Let’s go.”

I staggered to my feet and we continued up and down the mountain. The next day, when I woke up, I found that I could wiggle my upper left front tooth. I kept wiggling it with my tongue and finger for several days before I surrendered and went to the dentist.

“How did this happen?” the dentist asked.

“I ran into a tree trunk,” I said.

“A tree trunk?....Okay,” she said. “Open wider.”

She peered into my mouth and with her fingers pulled the tooth out easily, like you’d snap off a match from a matchbook.

“Gee,” she said, shaking her head. “Why didn’t you come in earlier?”

“It didn’t hurt,” I said.

“Okay.”

To make a long story short, I ended up getting a tooth implant. This involved having a dental sadist called a prosthodontist drill a metal screw into my upper jawbone, attach a small metal post to the screw, and then install the replacement tooth over it. Except for being a tad whiter now than the rest of my mouth, it’s served me well for 12 years.

But there it was in my hand on New Year’s Eve, our party in full swing, the clock ticking closer to midnight. I didn’t think the dentist would be up for this right then. I wasn’t up for this right then.

Karina said, “Let me call Dorrie and see what Lloyd does when his tooth falls out.”

Dorrie is a friend in Cincinnati. I didn’t know her husband had an implant, too. Apparently dental implants have become as common as c. i.’s, and will soon be available at Sam’s Club.

So Karina calls Dorrie in Cincinnati who says that Lloyd used PoliGrip to keep the tooth cap in place after it falls out.

My mother-in-law shakes her head: “PoliGrip? Why would he use that? You have to reapply it every day. Use Super Glue.”

A discussion ensues.

“Glue it.”

“But it happens to Lloyd all the time, and he uses PoliGrip.”

“It happens all the time beCAUSE he uses PoliGrip. Glue it.”

“Let’s call the dentist's emergency number.”

“Mom, let’s play the game.”

I consider both sides of the argument and decide to do nothing. I just stick the tooth back on the post.

“But you won’t be able to eat,” says Karina.

I look at my watch. It’s almost 11. “Well, it’s all drinking from here. No problem.”

We put the game away and watch the movie Holiday Inn on television, switching to the local channels during commercials to see the countdown to midnight. Bing gets the girl, the new year begins, and everybody wanders off to bed except me. I’m looking in the bathroom mirror at my upper left front tooth. I pull it on and off a few times.

I rummage through my desk for an adhesive, and come up with some Krazy Glue. I put a few drops in the socket of the tooth, slip it back on, and hold it there a few minutes. Then I put my bite guard in so the tooth won’t end up in my stomach, and go to bed.

The next morning, New Year’s Day, the tooth is still glued to the post. I eat, I drink, I try to be merry. I’ll go to the dentist today or tomorrow and get it fixed. Or maybe Monday. Why ruin the new year any sooner than you have to?

About 5 percent of the world’s population lives in the United States. Just so you know.

My Name Is Legion

2009-01-01T17:22:00.003-06:00

I was the fourth boy saint in my family. We lived in Chicago, where Catholics are the indigenous religious group. My parents named all their children after saints: Saint Patrick, Saint Michael, Saint Robert of Bellarmine, and me, Saint William. By the time we were three years old heaven was no longer an option, so we became Pat, Mike, Bob, and Bill.

Mine is a celebrity name. By luck of baptism, I have been associated with famous people my entire life. The first and most enduring connection has been with Billy Graham the evangelist, who became an internationally known figure when I was very young and remained so through my adulthood. While I was still a toddler, his immensely popular crusades landed him on the cover of Time magazine. (I’ve periodically used that cover as my profile photo in Facebook, hoping to get heaven back in the picture should God become one of my online friends.) And he stayed in the limelight for decades as a spiritual advisor to presidents.

My association with this Billy Graham is hard to get away from: When I’m first introduced to someone, there’s a 50-50 chance the person will say something like, “Oh, Reverend Billy Graham?...Billy Graham the preacher?” and ask me to bless them or invite them to a revival meeting, smiling like a colon, right-parenthesis emoticon.

Other people have become celebrities after changing their names to mine. I came across them in different ways. As an adolescent I and some of my friends became fans of championship wrestling. We’d watch matches on television together, debating if they were real or staged. We’d mimic the manic interviews with villains like Pretty Boy Bobby Heenan, Dr. Moto, and Mad Dog Vachon, acting nasty, brutish, and daft. We’d play act their signature moves, such as Black Jack Lanza’s devastating Oklahoma Stampede, executed by carrying the opponent completely across the ring over his head and slamming the guy down. One…two…three…he’s gone.

Near the end of my fascination with championship wrestling Superstar Billy Graham came to prominence. This golden-haired, steroid-rich humanoid was actually born Eldridge Wayne Coleman, a name that would have had his back pinned on the canvas every night. But as Superstar Billy Graham, he won several world wrestling championships and the adoration of hundreds of thousands of nutcases just like us. Consequently friends started to call me Superstar, a name not entirely inappropriate since I had reasonably good athletic skills. This nickname, albeit with a bit of self-promotion, stuck. To some of my friends I have been Billy Superstar Graham ever since, although today “Superstar” often is shortened to the somewhat less virile “Soup.”

Then there was Bill Graham, the rock concert promoter, whose real name was Wolfgang Grajonca. A Jewish immigrant to the United States who fled Nazi Europe, he took the name Graham because it was close to Grajonca in the New York City phone book. Where “Bill” came from is unknown. Maybe the telephone people kept shouting it at his door. Until he died in a helicopter crash in 1991 I had never heard of this Bill Graham. But his death made the front page of newspapers, so he was certifiably famous. I was probably unaware of him because most rock music came along “after my time”—that is, after my deafness kicked in. If he had been a karaoke promoter, I might have been a fan. To many baby boomers, however, he was quite well known, and some will say “Oh, the rock concert guy” when they hear my name.

Being associated with famous Bill/Billy Grahams becomes tiresome. But in the big picture I got lucky. For example, my famous name is associated with people who generally are regarded in a positive light, rather than someone evil like Adolf Hitler, John Gacy, or, especially, Steve Bartman. Plus, people tend to remember my name because of the celebrity connection and because it is relatively short and straightforward. That’s a heckuva lot better than having a long, uncommon name that is impossible to pronounce, much less remember. I mean, who’s going to remember a name like, say, Rodney Blagojevich. That’s a real loser. Life is good.

O Night Divine

2008-12-25T09:05:00.005-06:00

It’s Christmas, a time when almost all bloggers feel compelled to share a Christmas story. I usually try to avoid orthodox behaviors, but I’ve got Santa looking over my shoulder here, so today I’ll go mainstream.

This story took place three years ago, a few days after Thanksgiving. My brother Bob was getting married at his house on the near north side of Chicago. My family lives in Cary, about 40 miles northwest of the city. To avoid the drive and eradicate global warming, Karina and I decided to take a commuter train downtown, walk five blocks through the Loop, and take the subway to my brother’s neighborhood. We thought it’d be nice for the kids to see the city’s towering Christmas tree on Daley Plaza and take in the window displays at what was then still Marshall Field’s (now it’s Macy’s, a fact few Chicagoans acknowledge).

So we did this, and it was in fact delightful. The tree was as tall and beautiful as we remembered it from our childhood, and the kids squirmed their way through the crowds huddled at Field’s windows, getting their noses up close to the glass. Then we went over to the subway entrance and walked down the long flight of stairs.

As we slowly descended, Karina and I chatted with each other in sign language. Like many late-deafened people, I have to pay close attention to understand signs and I become oblivious to everything else in the surroundings. About halfway down, Karina motioned me to look in the direction we were heading.

There at the bottom of the steps stood a black man, like an apparition, looking directly at us. He wore a frayed brown fedora and a rumpled tweed sports coat several sizes too big, a person obviously down on his luck. He continued to look at us intently as we descended. Then with hesitance he finger spelled the words “Bill…Bill Graham.”

Startled, I cautiously signed “Yes.” Only gradually did I realize that I knew this person. I knew this person finger spelling my name. He smiled and with big signs and voice said “Good to see you.” “Hi,” I signed weakly, trying to place him and remember his name. He saved me by saying “Morris.” He finger spelled it as well.

Morris, I thought to myself….Morris…How do I know him? Then came the dawn of recognition: “Morris!” I shouted. “Morris Haynes!”

Morris had been in my very first sign language class at the Chicago Hearing Society almost 30 years ago. A hearing person, he took the class because he had a deaf cousin.

We shook hands warmly, and I introduced him to my wife and kids. He smiled broadly.

“This is wonderful,” he said, and with a waggle of his index finger signed: “Where are you going?”

I told him about my brother’s wedding, and he again said: “This is wonderful.”

Then he paused a moment in thought.

“I would like to sing your children a song,” he said finally.

I looked at Karina, who nodded. “Okay,” I said.

Morris led us over to a post where a cigar box lay on the platform. He positioned himself next to it and told the kids to stand right in front of him. Then he began to sing. It happened to be one of my favorite Christmas songs, “O Holy Night.”

Morris looked at my kids while he sang, his eyes never leaving their faces, his voice echoing off the tunnel walls. “….The stars are brightly shining…..A thrill of hope….For yonder breaks…..O hear the angels voices!.....O night divine….Led by the light……He knows our need……Behold your king!....”

We could hear the train coming from down the track. In a minute or so we would be on our way.

“O HEAR the angels VOIces! Oh night divine….”

The train roared closer, building to a crescendo. Morris sang louder.

“O NIGHTTT! O HOly NIGHTTT! O NIGHT DIVINNNEEEE!”

As he finished the train rolled into the station, like it was carefully planned.

Morris said to our kids: “Did you like it?” They nodded.

“That was beautiful,” Karina said, signing.

“Thank you,” I signed.

Awkwardly, I took out my wallet. I removed a ten dollar bill and placed it in his box.

“Thank you,” I signed again, and we hugged.

“Have a merry Christmas,” he said to me, and then to my family.

“Merry Christmas,” I said, as I started to walk away. “You take care.”

“Merry Christmas, Bill.”

“I hope to see you again.”

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

Karina and the kids waved me onto the train. I boarded and stood at the door looking out. Morris had moved to another area of the platform. As he positioned his box, our train began to move and quickly gathered speed. Soon we would be at my brother’s wedding.

I turned to Karina and she signed: “He has a really beautiful baritone voice.”

“That was wonderful,” I signed. “Wonderful.”

Morris will probably never know how special his song was. Or that he’s been in my heart on Christmas ever since, his voice resounding in the tunnel as that train approached the station.

Merry Christmas, Morris. Merry Christmas. I hope you’re well.

Catch Me if You Can

2008-12-22T15:48:00.008-06:00

I travel a lot because I live in Chicago and my job is in Seattle. That’s a long story that friends already know and I’m not inclined today to explain it to others-who-really-don’t-care-but-want-to-know-anyway. I’ll leave that stirring drama of heartbreak and triumph for another blog. The blog I’m writing today is far less ambitious, and therefore very much like myself. It’s about having bilateral cochlear implants and going through airport security scanners.

As all c. i. users know, when they walk through airport scanners they have a terrific opportunity to educate TSA employees and travelers waiting in line with their shoes off. When the guy with the badge peers at you curiously and says: “What’s that on your head?” you should respond “It’s a cochlear implant” and explain in appropriate detail how the device works and how it benefits you. Then the badge says, “That’s really great. But you can’t take that can of Red Bull through, sir. You’ll have to leave it here.”

Well, I’m a lousy implant evangelist. I just want to get through the scanners without a hassle after the mind-numbing cattle drive to get there. With my first c. i. this is no problem. My hair is long enough to cover most of the headpiece and I don't use a T-mic, so the c. i. looks no more than an outsized hearing aid or Bluetooth gadget. Plus, it has never activated a scanner's alarm. Typically I get through without breaking stride or attracting attention. I then grab my shoes, my keys, my wallet, and other terrorist threats from the portable bin and high-tail it to the terminal. Gate C-26 lounge here I come. Yesss!

Now I have a second c. i.; this one has a T-mic that hangs down at a slightly odd angle from my ear. After a year, I still don’t feel comfortable wearing it in tandem with my golden oldie. Part of the reason is that I haven’t gotten notable benefits from C. I. No. 2 yet (another epic blog there…be patient, my friends). So functionally the c. i. is more like jewelry than a life-changing hearing apparatus. And, much to my wife’s distress, I’m not big on jewelry. I’d feel uncomfortable with a flashy lapel pin, cufflinks, or nose ring, too. You can take the boy out of the South Side of Chicago, but you can’t take....etc. etc. It’s true.

Another reason I’m uncomfortable going through security two c. i.'s at once is that my bilateral condition seems to capture the fascination of the whole airport community. The first time I did this on a trip the implant set off the scanner and two or three badges converged on me with intent to pat down, looking directly at my head. With forbearance, I explained to them the kind of heat my head was packing. Perhaps they were having simultaneous bad hair days but none of them smiled and said “That’s really great.” Instead, with Buster Keaton miens and barely perceptible nods they sent me on my way. Same to you, guys. Wait’ll you become deaf.

Anyway, now when I fly I take off my second c. i. as I approach the scanner. I put it in the bin with my shoes, my keys, my wallet, and my Blackberry, and let it ride on the conveyer belt to the place of safety. Meanwhile I walk through the scanner wearing only one c. i., as I have for more than a decade. The badge looks at me dispassionately, checks my ticket, and motions me through. And that’s it: I’m free to gather up all my stuff and head to Gate C-26, unmolested.

As I walk down the terminal reattaching my second c. i., I contemplate wearing both c. i.’s through the scanner next time. And if I get to the other side without setting off a convocation of badges, I’ll very likely say to myself: “That’s really great.”

Deaf Driving

2008-12-16T01:07:00.006-06:00

Tony’s cheerleading team did great the second day of the competition and they finished 0.07 of a point behind the team that was Grand Champion. That point spread looks very Bond-ian, and Tony certainly was surrounded by enough girls to make the connection relevant. Watching cheerleader girls fawn over him every practice and competition makes me wonder what my life might have been like if I’d been a cheerleader instead of a dugout/bench/court rat. Maybe I’d be the highest late-deafened roller in Monte Carlo right now or get to use cool weapons. Or maybe I’d be dead. Hmmm. I guess baseball, basketball, and tennis had upsides, too.

The trip to Indianapolis turned out better than I expected. I car pooled with another Cheer Fusion mom…I mean “a” Cheer Fusion mom…which in hindsight was pretty smart. Although I’m functionally deaf in conversations with multiple hearing people, I can handle most 1:1 conversations pretty well. Plus I drive a hybrid that is pretty quiet unless there are two relentlessly noisy cheer children in the back seat, which there were, but let’s not quibble. It was still a better situation than five cheer moms talking fast in a restaurant.

Indianapolis is four hours from the Chicago suburb where I live. I can’t consistently understand a passenger without some lip-reading, so for much of the drive my head was at a 90 degree angle and I wandered between the lane divider and the shoulder at over 70 mph. And, oh yes, I occasionally checked and sent messages on my Blackberry to make things a tad more challenging. (My equal rights statement to bad-driving cell phone users.) With two kids in the back seat, I should have been arrested, but hey, that’s just how deaf people drive. Even late-deafened people can get the hang of it if they’re foolish enough to work at it.

Stephanie, the cheer mom who bravely accompanied me, is a lawyer, and when we left her driveway I thought the trip would be a conversation disaster. She talks fast and tends to turn away when she finishes her remarks. I had to educate her about my needs—namely, talk s-l-o-w and look at me. I’ve been in this situation a zillion times and half a zillion times the outcome has been a bust despite my best efforts. Fast talkers tend to remain fast talkers even at gunpoint.

By the time we were ten miles into the drive I probably had told Stephanie to please slow down maybe five times, which averages to approximately 35 please-slow-downs per hour or about 140 please-slow-downs to Indianapolis. But Stephanie caught on better than many people I’ve known, and by the Indiana border we were doing fairly well. So were the kids, since she had provided melatonin pills to help them fall asleep. Tony never had one before, and he quickly conked out. Veronica, Stephanie’s daughter, had apparently developed some immunity to the pills as she only briefly went silent.

In any case, Stephanie and I had a really nice discussion for 3-plus hours. I learned more about the Cheer Fusion program than I had in the last ten months combined. I learned about the various conflicts and intrigues among the moms, which was worth the price of gas right there. For example, one mom is a real pain-in-the-ass and wants to start her own gym and bring the coaches with her. That’s good information to have if there’s an IPO. I also learned the names of a lot of the other cheer moms and their daughters. And I learned a lot about Stephanie and her family.

After we arrived in Indianapolis I went out to dinner with Stephanie and another cheer mom and her daughters. They mimicked Stephanie’s way of interacting with me, and so I got to know them, too. The rest of the weekend I periodically hung around with Stephanie and got to know other moms and even one dad who actually showed up on his own volition. All of this made me feel more a part of the dysfunctional Cheer Fusion family and I only read half of my New Yorker magazine while I sat in the stands over the two days and 12 hours of competition. They don’t have dirt about pain-in-the-ass cheer moms in the New Yorker. But the cheer mom grapevine does.

So when’s the next big meet with a long drive? I want to car pool again.

Cheer Mania

2008-12-14T21:42:00.004-06:00

I’m here in Indianapolis at a cheerleading competition with my son Tony. Tony, 10, is a cheerleader for Cheer Fusion, a cutting edge program that costs a lot and involves sacrificing your life to driving and meets. There are 52 teams here with over 200 individual squads. Every so often I take off one of my cochlear implants to stop the ringing in my head. Fortunately most of the cheerleaders are girls and I don’t hear high frequency sounds very well. But some of the parent groups, including ours, use thunder bats to assist their lungs when the team comes out and then it’s like a rock concert.

My daughter Eva, 12, is also a Cheer Fusion cheerleader, one level higher than Tony, but she’s back in Chicago this time for a school cheer competition. So it’s just me and the boy at this two-day spectacular in the Indianapolis Convention Center. The convention center is downtown and everything costs a fortune: parking is $50, in-room Internet goes for $10, orange juice costs $4….and no disabled discounts. If the cheer program itself doesn’t break you, the meets will.

We may be the only father-and-son tandem on site. I know we are the only father-with-bilateral-implants-and-son tandem here. And I’m rotten with background noise….I mean really rotten, maybe in the lower 10 percentile among c. i. users. With the thunder bats going, verbal communication is pretty much impossible. I have magazines along to ease my pain.

I haven’t missed a meet all year. I plan out-of-town business trips around meets so I’ll be there. The meets are full-day events--sometimes two days like this one—and I often sit for six hours to watch my kids perform for two minutes. I’m usually with my wife who I can talk with in sign, but we tend to run out of things to say to each other after the fourth or fifth hour. This weekend I have a heckuva lot more communication down time to burn.

But this is one of those father-son bonding opportunities. My boy, truth be told, communicates mostly with my wife. He doesn’t know many signs—an outcome of the very common signing-dad-with-implant-signing-wife-with-hearing conflict—and for the last year he (and the rest of the family) have been increasingly frustrated because I continue to practice with my second c. i. singly and I’m not doing very well with it. So it’s good for me to go out on dates with Tony when there’s no recourse but to talk to me. I know I should do this more often, just so it isn’t a cheerleading meet every time.

Ooops, time to end this blog and wake him up. Get him dressed, eat breakfast, check out of the hotel, and then onward to the big second day of competition. After Day 1, his team is in first place among 26 others in his division so they have a shot at Grand Champion. He doesn’t care if he wins or loses (an attitude I wish could be preserved in amber), but I’ll be thrilled if they do. I’m more competitive than he is, and I want my money’s worth after 12 hours of sitting and hundreds of dollars of Indianapolis. And oh yes, those thunder bats. I’ll hear them in my electrodes for a week or more.

Once More Unto the Breach

2008-11-25T18:17:00.003-06:00

A lobby half full of ALDAns stretched out before me. Stiffen the sinews, Bill, conjure up the blood. Diguise fair nature….No, no, this isn’t war. Relax. Deep breath. ALDA conference. Karaoke. Think fun.

But 15 years away from ALDA had eroded my composure. Did I really want to plunge into the pool again? What if the water was cold? I glanced quickly around but didn’t see anyone I knew for certain. There were a few faces I vaguely recognized, like indistinct, lingering images of a dream. But I couldn’t attach names to the faces, and I didn’t want to stop and guess. With Vaughn close behind, I strode briskly towards the reservations desk.

I felt relief when I got to the counter. I've stayed in a lot of hotels over the years and know the check-in routine by rote: "Graham; GRAham; yes, William; four nights, (give credit card), (sign slip), one key is fine, where do I go?, thank you." Piece of cake, even if the clerk has an impenetrable accent. This clerk seemed a bit uneasy to communicate with me, maybe because with two c.i.'s attached to my head I was obviously one of t-h-e-m. I saw a card with the fingerspelling alphabet on the desk before him and playfully said “Good luck with that!” to which he smiled. I then reflected that his likely slowness in fingerspelling a word would actually be a perfect pace for many ALDAns, not necessarily excluding me.

Before I got to "where do I go?" I felt a tap on the shoulder. I turned warily to see who was tapping and...Phil Bravin!...Phil!...PHIL!!...I sprung forward and gave him a big hug, Deaf style. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?” I said-and-signed in disbelief. Phil fails the litmus test of late-deafness by a country mile. He is what people call strong Deaf, from a multigenerational-ASL-forever Deaf family. Not strong ALDA at all. So why was he at ALDAcon? Then I remembered Phil had become a consultant for CSDVRS, one of the video-relay titans, which had an exhibit booth at the conference. His crafty-fox grin broke into a hearty chuckle.

Phil and I go way back, all the way back to my ALDA heyday, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. We served many years together on the Gallaudet Board of Trustees--he was board Chair; I, an acolyte--and all the years he was there we had these little bowls of M&Ms around the boardroom table during afternoon sessions. After he left the board, the M&Ms unexpectedly left too. I mourned both losses.

We hadn't totally lost touch: He returned to Gallaudet occasionally while I was still on the board, and he always sends me his annual Christmas letter, which becomes longer every year as his extended family multiplies. (Each letter includes a Bravin family photo, now possible only with a fisheye lens.) Although we had our differences about what happened at Gallaudet two years ago, my respect and affection for Strong D Phil has never wavered. So when I saw him there at the Doubletree, I broke into a slaphappy smile that utterly demolished my unease about attending ALDAcon.

"Sir, the elevator is behind you." Still smiling, I looked at the desk clerk and said: "Thanks!" Suddenly that lobby of conference-goers looked a helluva lot more inviting. Sweetheart, get me rewrite: little d Bill has landed.

Return to ALDAcon

2008-11-24T18:48:00.005-06:00

Three weeks ago I attended my first full ALDAcon in 15 years. Although I had taken part in several committees planning the Con, I felt uneasy about going to it. I had never attended a Con as a normal human being, only as a leader or a keynote speaker. When you lead or keynote, people expect you to have super powers that can save the day or at least a plenary luncheon. You always have to act like you know what you’re doing or saying, even when you don’t. But as a late-deafened adult, I excel at that sort of bluffing, and I like to do things I am good at. Leading or speaking gives me an opportunity to deploy my special skills, not to mention satisfy my lifelong need to be the center of attention.

But as ALDAcon 2008 bore down on me, with growing anxiety I realized that I had no role to slip into other than conference-goer. Oh sure, I was co-presenter in one plenary session, but I still had more than 25 other hours to fill. I’m just not the kind of person who goes to conferences without a predetermined role. Conferences cost a lot of money, for one thing, and--perhaps because I spend so much time on the margins of hearing society--I’m comfortable being a loner. Attend conferences? I’d rather sit through six-hour cheerleading meets, high in the stands far from the crowd, doing a crossword puzzle while waiting for my kids to perform their two-minute routines. Or so I told myself.

My friend Vaughn came in from California for the Con. He stayed at our house on Tuesday, the day before the conference began. Vaughn hadn’t been to a Con in almost as long as I hadn’t, and it took extensive goading to get him to come.

Now if you know anything about Vaughn, you know that this fellow loves to golf. On any given day, he’ll happily golf till the cows come home and are asleep in the barn. Since I live on a golf course it was predictable that I’d suggest we play golf on Wednesday, even though it was 45 degrees outside. That’s just common hospitality, but in truth it was also a conscious effort on my part to get to the Con a little later than planned and chip off a few hours of all that conference downtime that awaited me.

Before I left home for the Con, I confessed to Karina that I really didn’t feel like going. She stifled a sigh and gave a semi-exasperated nod. After 18 years of marriage it’s fair to say she knows me and my cold feet well, so her "Oh c’mon, Guillermo" demeanor was like a reassuring hug and helped propel me out the door. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Vaughn and I took a commuter train downtown, about a 65-minute trip. He has a cochlear implant and I have two, but I couldn’t understand much he was saying on the noisy train. So by the second station I had my nose in a magazine and he was playing with his sacred iPhone. Soon enough we were downtown and in a cab on our way to the Doubletree Hotel, the site of the Con.

When we got to the hotel, my angst returned as if on cue. I saw people in the lobby signing badly together or straining forward with obvious difficulty towards the person talking to them. These were ALDAns. No doubt about it. What now?

Curse of the Volunteer

2008-04-27T21:21:00.021-05:00

I wake up early and stare at the ceiling a lot more these days. I haven't asked my doctor yet but I know exactly what ails me: I'm an ALDAcon volunteer.

Each morning the ceiling asks me the same questions: "Why are you doing this, Graham?" "Don't you know better by now?" "What nonsense will you attempt today?" "When will this stop?" "Do you know where your family is?"

And I stare some more.

A long time ago, before I grew up (or thought I had), I was an ALDA slave. 100 percent chattle, my mind and body owned by the Big A. My days went like this: wake up, ALDA; walk dog, ALDA; red light, ALDA; commuter train, ALDA; boss not looking, ALDA; wife on phone, ALDA; walk dog, ALDA; can’t sleep, ALDA. And so on, and so forth.

But that was 20 years ago, when my relative youthfulness and unregulated lifestyle could explain away my blind obsession, my unbridled zeal, my feverish delusions about ALDA. Now I’m older and have a family, a working stiff with single-minded focus on a 529 college-savings plan and retirement. Then two months ago, in a moment of astonishing madness, I volunteered for ALDAcon. Why get older if you don’t get wiser?

There's no mistaking it: I'm once more under the spell of the dreaded and always disabling Curse of the Volunteer. The signs are all too familiar: Do a bit of work for one ALDAcon committee (Sponsorship), notice a point of intersection with another (PR), and gradually get pulled in deeper (Scholarship) and deeper (Program) and deeper (Planning) until there you are flat on your back, contemplating the bedroom ceiling. It's deja voodoo all over again.

And I see the curse all about me, vivid, alarming. Kathy does IM jigs around her day job, Carolyn scours through the ALDAcon policy manual for answers to obscure questions, Kathryn fixates on ALDA values in long rambling emails, Miguel stays up well beyond bedtime his Blackberry buzzing uncontrollably...And just as sleep finally descends in the Eastern and Central time zones, Christine checks in from Seattle with a laundry list of talking points that can keep you up all night if you read through them all. So you do.

The curse! The curse! I stifle the urge to scream. Then, I scream. The delirium builds each day: Karina snaps her finger, no response; my kids float in a fog around me; deadlines at work loom and pass unnoticed...I must break this spell, I must!

On a night when the Moon is waning, I take a blood root and throw it onto the doorstep of Mary Clark, the fiend who asked me to volunteer for ALDAcon. And I chant: “This spell on me I return to thee, To thee who hast so ill-asked me. So might it be.” I improvise with a sign of the cross and some yoga asanas, and then leave. Free at last. Again.

After I get home, I wander with relief to my formerly cursed computer and log on. But there--at the top of the queue--is an email from Lois, chair of the Sponsorship Committee, musing on who to approach next: "CTIA, AOL and A T & T - up for grabs!" Hypnotically, I hit the Reply button and type: "CTIA...maybe I can do that one." No, Graham, don't. GET...A...GRIP! Don't! Don't! But my hand moves robotically to the mouse and I slowly move the cursor until it hovers over Send...and...and...and...click! Auggghhhhh!

I'll try candles, garlic, and wolfbane next.

Bilateral Man

2008-04-25T10:39:00.028-05:00

I received my first cochlear implant in 1995. I think a lot of people were surprised. Throughout my ALDA "career" I had tried to convey that being deafened is okay, despite the functional difficulties and psychological wham-bam that losing one's hearing as an adult comprise. Getting an implant seemed a change in course.

But there is nothing sinful about hearing sounds or words (oh, sweet Jesus...). Over the years, I'd watched people with old and with new CI technology come to ALDAcon. I noticed that the folks with the newer CI models generally did a lot less bluffing (as determined by my hearing wife) than those with the older devices. This suggested, as was actually widely known to be the case, that CI technology had improved.

So why the heck not get an implant? I'd learned to live and be content as a deafened person (with a big assist from ALDA) but, just like other deafened adults, I still hated being deaf. You think I didn't want to hear the ice cream truck come jingling down the street? I love ice cream. Even on cold days.

The implant was pretty cool. After a while, I could hear my wife laugh, recognize geese honking, and hear a person behind me on the train platform say: "What the hell is THAT?" (That's me, buddy; ain't you ever seen a big long cable with a magnet on the side of a head before?) And I can hear people on the phone if they speak English slowly or are my wife. Other calls can make me crazy and as aggravated as I ever was as a deaf-deaf person; maybe worse since I didn't try to use the phone as a deaf-deaf person. I need a self-help group for CI people who use telephones badly.

But the implant has been a great enabler. I'm not sure I could have managed 10 people at Microsoft so seamlessly without it. I'll never be one of those deafened-people-can-do-anything guys. I can't hear nearly as well as I once did, for example, even with the CI. And in my brain, that limits me. Other late-deafened people have better brains, of course, so I can only speak for myself.

I'm not being negative here, just honest. And I can also honestly say that in my family life, the CI has been indispensable...no, precious. Karina and I started our family after I got the CI. I heard my babies cry, heard their first words, heard them call "Daddy" hundreds of times, and also heard them whine, heard them be stubborn, and heard them get angry and slam doors. But I heard them, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Which is not to say family communication is perfect at the Graham's. Don't make me laugh. I don't hear my kids well in a wide variety of situations, such as at crowded school events or recreational activities or even around the dinner table. And my kids sometimes gravitate toward my wife because it can be less frustrating to communicate with her in a hurry. Frankly, I would too. It's easy to say: "You can fix that, Bill, if you're more assertive about your needs." And I agree that Yes, I can, but I also know that life sometimes gets in the way of Yes, I can. There's a lot going on.

In December I received a second CI. I was ambivalent all along: another operation, another device dangling from my head, another period of uncertainty about its benefits. I decided to go for it because the technology had again improved, because my insurance covered it, and because there was a fair chance that bilateral implants would help me deal better with background noise, my exasperating Achilles' heel. I didn't pretend to think that my medley of deaf-deaf moments would suddenly disappear. But ultimately I told myself I had nothing to lose.

I've had the second implant for five months now. I have not made much progress with it yet, but I'm not particularly upset (EXCEPT THAT I THOUGHT I'D DO BETTER!). I figure that I'll eventually get to wherever I'm going with it and, outside of practicing with it singly, listening to bad audio books, and remapping, I don't have much control over what happens. I'm centered somewhat by the knowledge that the deaf-deaf side of me will cope okay whatever happens. I think ALDA has helped me a lot in that regard. But if my first CI goes down and I can't hear the ice cream truck anymore, I'm heading for a bridge.

Reality Check

2008-04-20T22:02:00.012-05:00

So off I went to secure sponsorship No. 2, from NCRF....

I wrote my patented cloying email to BJ Shorak, NCRF Director, making a casual sales pitch while feigning that she might not remember me. Then, smug and expectant, I sat back and waited.

She responded just a few hours later. Good sign.

"SO good to hear from you, Bill!!"

Yep, you da gal, BJ. Even if you like Karina best. Go on.

"Where have the years gone....? And do I remember you? LOL!!! You and Karen will ALWAYS be special to me."

Emphasis on Karen, but I'm implicated too: special. Special is always a good sign. Lois, did you hear that? Special.

"I would LOVE to see you all again sometime."

Love in caps! Can the signs be any better? This isn't ALDA Crappy Sign--this is ALDA Happy Sign.

"It sure WAS great to be a part of ALDA in those early days. I'll never forget my awe at karaoke there! Pure joy!"

BJ, the joy is all mine. Let's sing together. Go on, my friend. Go on.

"A reunion in Chicago would be great fun!"

Speaking of fun, here's the sponsorship and exhibitor form. Make my day, BJ, make my day....

"I would love nothing more than to be able to tell you we can sponsor something, Bill, esp. since it's ALDA's 20th...."

Yep, ALDA's 20th. Best conference ever. Great year to be a sponsor....Hey....wait a minute: "I would love nothing more than to be able to tell you...?" That's not a good sign, that's a bad sign. Bad sign! Code Blue! Code Blue!

"... but I can't."

Oh, nooo.

"NCRF has shifted its focus regarding access-related grants. We have a new "CART for Schools Program," where we provide funding for CART at important school functions such as graduation ceremonies."

Nooooo....But I gotta admit: that's a really laudable focus. It really is.

"NCRF will fund NCRA members to provide CART in select K-12 school events with hearing-impaired participants that otherwise wouldn't have access to realtime captioning."

Does ALDA qualify as K-12? You've been at an ALDAcon karaoke party, BJ. Exhibit A!

"We've already turned down others this year. However, I'll bring this up to my Board to see if there's something we can do...."

Hey, I used to be on that board.

"I'll keep my fingers crossed and let you know!"

So sweet of BJ to let me down gently. She's good people, no matter what happens.

But, umm...wasn't I, the greatest thing since rye bread, supposed to cop a sponsorship here? That gale you feel is the air coming out of my balloon. Maybe I'm not such a hotshot sponsorship-getter after all. I'm special and I'm loved, but I'm a failure. How did I get into this line of work? And with the U.S. economy tanking, this could be the worst six months of my life.

Or is it seven?

The Kingdom of CART

2008-04-19T08:36:00.008-05:00

Back to the ALDAcon Sponsorship Committee....After scoring so well on my first assignment, Caption First, I felt like nothing could stop me. And the next organization on the list further fed my uncharacteristic buoyancy. Kind, kind Lois again had ceded me rights to friendly fire: the National Court Reporters Foundation (NCRF) and its director B. J. Shorak. It's hardly a secret that B. J. and the NCRF are among ALDA's most enduring friends.

I knew this first-hand. A few weeks after Jerry Miller treated me to the real-time demonstration in the courtroom, he invited me to attend the National Court Reporters Association (NCRA) convention in Orlando, Florida, all expenses paid. At first I'm thinking: Who wants to go to a court reporters convention? What fun is that going to be? Why not just sit in a library for a few days? Or watch ink dry?

I mean, how much fun could a group of court reporters be? These people work in courtrooms day after day year after year, silently typing, silently typing, silently typing away on their uniquely weird machines. Then they go home and feed the cat, right? I had people like that around me 40 hours a week: encyclopedia editors! Our idea of a high time was going out for nonvegan food. With kefir milk. I didn't need to travel to Orlando for kefir milk.

But what the heck, an all-expenses paid trip: nobody ever offered me one of those before. Maybe I could make a side trip to Epcot Center or Sea World to make things interesting. And they invited Karina, too, who was not an encyclopedia editor. Or a court reporter.

Well, the NCRA convention was an eye-opener. It took place at the Orlando World Center Marriott Resort, a quantum leap from my usual away-from-home lodgings of choice, Motel 6. The Marriott had an 18-hole golf course, a full-service spa, a 24-hour fitness center, lighted tennis courts, and a huge, huge outdoor pool that proved a fabulous place to get a tan (this was back in the days before everyone used SPF-90). (It was also the place that I first met Marylyn Howe, the wild woman from Massachusetts who subsequently founded ALDA Boston and the ALDAcon karaoke party.)

The ballroom where the NCRA banquet and entertainment took place was pulsing with people dressed to the nines....could these be court reporters? I had my wedding suit on and I felt pathetically underdressed. Toto, I don't think we're at World Book anymore. Dinner included the most remarkable slice of prime rib I've ever seen. So remarkable that, with Karina's urging, I ended two years of vegetarianism and scarfed it down. Then the dancing started and, woo-hoo, could court reporters hoof it! I bet they could go 15 rounds of karaoke and stay upright.

Some of CART's greatest pioneers were at the convention, among them Marty Block, who was the very first realtime reporter, the first to caption ALDAcon, and co-creator of the term CART; Joe Karlovits, who founded VITAC, now the largest captioning company in the United States; and Saint Woody Waga, who has done CART at ALDAcon forever and a day and who gained canonization when he received the ALDA Angel Award in 1995. Also the irrepressibly effervescent B. J. Shorak, then NCRA's director of technology. B. J. really connected with Karina, and so I got to know her well by chasing their shadows. A year or so after the convention, B. J. invited me to join the board of NCRF, NCRA's nonprofit arm, probably because it gave her another chance to see Karina, who was invited to interpret. Or maybe the invitations came in the opposite order, I don't remember.

So it was with irrational exuberance that I typed my email to B. J. requesting ALDAcon sponsorship from the NCRF.

Court Reporters

2008-04-16T22:15:00.010-05:00

Okay, here's the deal: I am so old that I knew a genera of early humans called court reporters before CART became an industry. Court reporters are the direct ancestors of CART reporters, who evolved into a distinct species only over the past few decades in the Galapagos Islands. That's why the ALDA Galapagos chapter has some of the finest captioning on the planet. There are so many CART reporters there that the beaches are littered with stenograph machines. Recent studies indicate that three giant tortoises have learned rudimentary CART.

I'm from the Jurassic Period of real-time, when it was primarily done by court reporters in the seclusion of courtrooms and without display devices. (Fossil evidence of transcripts date to the mid-Triassic.) I came upon this secret society by happenstance. Ancient Chicago ALDAns had begun using a primitive tool called ALDA Crude in self-help groups. The invention of computer manchild Steven Wilhelm (Nevets computicus), ALDA Crude consisted of a simple PC connected to a television and a good, or at least speedy, volunteer typist.

Somehow word of Steven's mischief got around, and I received a call from Jerry Miller, chief shaman of the National Court Reporters Association (NCRA). Jerry's office was in downtown Chicago, only a few blocks from where I worked. We got together for lunch and he told me all about these strange creatures who used an abbreviated keyboard device, inputing a kind of code that enabled them to keep pace with multiple speakers and produce a verbatim record of the conversation after it ended. Subsequently, Jerry took me to the federal courthouse and showed how a court reporter might hook up such a stenograph device to a monitor so that words were displayed in real-time.

The implications astounded my late Jurassic brain. For most species of late-deafened adults, this was the communication equivalent of discovering fire. Court reporters controlled this fire, and thus became our gods.

AARPed

2008-04-15T23:37:00.006-05:00

Karina is in Columbus, Ohio, today through Thursday, and I am being held hostage by my children. They have my hands and feet roped to a chair right now and are playing with matches. Tony is the one with the matches; Eva is the one clapping. I don't think I am going to get any sponsorships tonight, unless somebody wants to sponsor a rescue mission. But nobody knows where Cary, IL is. Except the IRS. And AARP.

I mention AARP because they finally found me today. I got through five years of my 50s without them knowing it. When Karina turned 50, the AARP mailman came the same day. But I had outwitted AARP by acting 18 and having a Kucinich sticker on my car.

But now, it's over. There's the AARP mailing on the table. Kids, if you're going to set me aflame burn that envelope first. I don't want to open it; I want to die young. How can I expect to get any sponsors for ALDAcon if I'm AARPed? With my c.i.'s I can hear them now: "Give money to you, old man? Give money to you? Why don't you raise money for something your age, like AARP?"

Because the kids have me tied to this chair, that's why.

Caption First

2008-04-14T23:01:00.005-05:00

Back to the Sponsorship Committee….I was ready to go a’CARTing. But there were several potential ALDAcon CART sponsors so I looked to Lois for guidance. She said: “You are up first with Caption First.” An English major unto death, the lyrical repetition of “first” soothed me.

And so did the assignment. Caption First is one of ALDA’s earliest and most ardent supporters. They sponsored the tote bags for ALDAcon 2007 and, Lois pointed out, they had first dibs at the bags this year. Without my c.i.’s on, “first dibs” sounded an awful lot like “slam dunk.”

It didn’t hurt that I’d known the president of Caption First for almost two decades. That would be Pat Graves. Long before ALDA had tote bags, Pat Graves toted ALDA Chicago’s caption needs on her fingers. Both ALDA and live, real-time captioning were in their infancy in the late 1980s. (I’ll let you decide whether ALDA ever grew up.) Pat was a court reporter who saw a future in real-time captioning, and she volunteered her services to ALDA Chicago so she could do useful work while she improved her skills.

At board and self-help group meetings, Pat would faithfully arrive, set up her equipment, put on her red cape with an S on it, and sit down at her keyboard. Meetings sometimes went two or three hours, and she rarely asked for a break. Once in a while, deep into a meeting, one of us would notice that Pat was kneading and wringing her hands feverishly and looked like she was about to keel over. So we’d finally call a time out. After stretching a while and applying smelling salts, she was ready to soldier on. And on. And on.

The and-on’s continued even after she had set up her own business, Caption First, which flourished. She later moved the business to Colorado, but she never stopped serving ALDA. At ALDAcon 1998 she received the ALDA Angel Award.

The night before I contacted Pat to sponsor us again I got an additional bargaining chip, in the form of a poker chip. I discovered that her deaf brother was in my monthly poker group. I didn’t even know she had a deaf brother. Anyone asking for money should network better than that. But now I had the perfect anecdote-that-precedes-sales-pitch.

Not that I needed one. Pat bleeds ALDA green, red, and blue (see http://www.alda.org/ for team colors). If I blew this one, I’d be selling ALDAcon pencils immediately thereafter.

But my approach to Pat was very savvy. Very savvy indeed. After the know-your-brother anecdote I typed something like: “Hey Pat! Want to do the tote bags for ALDAcon?” She wrote back in capital letters, 20 or 24 pt. font: “CAPTION FIRST WOULD BE HONORED TO BE THE SPONSOR OF THE TOTE BAGS.” Boy, was I good at this sponsorship stuff….Next!

ALDA Chicago Is 20

2008-04-13T09:22:00.007-05:00

Yesterday night Karina and I attended our first ALDA-Chicago event in 15 or 16 years: the 20th birthday party of the chapter. It was held in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, about 60 miles from my Cary exurb to the northwest. That meant making a Grand Prix drive on Chicago tollways on a Saturday evening, when all good drivers are bunkered safely in their homes. That leaves only drunk or stoned drivers, or just plain bad drivers, like me. So I guess I really wanted to go.

And I'm glad I did. I only knew about a quarter of the people there, but it was great to feel their warmth again. And I enjoyed meeting folks who were "new" to me, although a lot of them had been involved with ALDA since the mid or late 1990's. Before leaving home, I crammed on the most recent issue of ALDA-Chicago News--full of photos--so I wouldn't completely flunk the who's who test. It didn't help much. My memory is only a fraction now of what it used to be, and I failed miserably connecting faces with the names in the newsletter. And if there was another party tonight, I'd probably fail again. This getting older stuff is overrated.

I was asked to say a few words. Historically, I bumble horribly through speeches if I don't write them out ahead of time. Nobody's ever needed a teleprompter more than me. Since this was an impromptu gig, I was tempted to apologize before I started and encourage people to use my time for a restroom visit or a smoke outside. But things went pretty well and the people who were still awake applauded at the end.

In the car driving home, Karina and I did the ritual "Well, what do you think?" Although I'm a persnickety editor by profession who believes that nothing is good unless it's perfect, I admitted to my wife that I had a very nice time. And my objective observations after 15 years away? Two things stuck out: (1) the average age of ALDA Chicagoans is older than it used to be, and (2) very few people now use sign language.

"Back in my day" you could count on one hand the people over 60. Most members of ALDA Chicago then were in the 35 to 50 age range. Yesterday there was a lot more gray hair and less hair, and I'll venture that the overall age range has advanced 15 years or so, about the same amount of time I had been away. I like having younger people around; they often have more energy and wilder ideas than older people, oui? Without energy and big ideas organizations start to sputter. ALDA needs young people to do the fancy Grand Prix driving. They karaoke pretty good, too.

My second observation--that few people signed--was hard on my eyes. I am, on good nights, a lousy lipreader. I move closer and squint, lean nearer and squint some more. Looks like I'm sucking a lemon. And this ALDA group was pretty citrus. A high percentage of ALDA people Chicagoans now have cochlear implants. Most of them seem to hear very well (or they bluff very well), even at last night's noisy party. I myself now have two implants, and I hear better than when I was implantless of course; nevertheless, I would have died for more signing at the party.

But not any kind of signing--not the good kind. Only the kind that Kathryn Woodcock, Ph.D., an impeccably erudite Canadian ALDAn, calls Classic ALDA Crappy Sign. I am passionate about ALDA Crappy Sign because it accomplishes two things: It helps me understand a person better because it S-L-O-W-S the person down. Few ALDAns can talk and sign fast at the same time. One of my primary problems with reading lips is that the lips go too fast, just like my problem with people who know ASL from childhood is that their hands go too fast. And as I get older, even with dual implants, it's mostly citrus and so I squint, squint, and squint some more.

The other great thing about Crappy Sign is that it's unique to ALDA: You just can't use it anywhere else in the world without shame. ALDA IS A GREAT PLACE TO PRACTICE CRAPPY SIGN!! (There, I feel better.) And signing badly together can be a lot of fun, just like singing badly at karaoke can be a blast. But there wasn't much Crappy Sign at the ALDA birthday party. Crap.

I had a good time at the party anyway. I just need a few days or so for my eyes to recover.

ALDA Mom's Mom

2008-04-12T06:13:00.007-05:00

Yesterday I made reference to a group of people who made me feel blessed to be alive. And I was going to write about them here. But I've changed my mind because somebody's no longer alive. Mary Clark's mother died yesterday.

Mary Clark is the planning chair for ALDAcon who badgered me until I got involved on a committee. I didn't know her mother, who lived in Maine far from my home in not-Gary Cary, IL. But it doesn't matter. Whenever somebody else's mom dies, I think of my own mother and her death even though it happened very long ago, in 1989. That adds to the compassion and empathy I feel for that somebody else, and today it is Mary.

Mary and I have had our differences, and what is customarily called a "falling out." We got angry at each other and for quite a few years we didn't communicate. Then one day I got an email from her, friendly in tone, asking how I and my family were doing. I responded in a humorless sentence or two, something like "I'm fine and Karina is fine and the kids are doing great." Thereafter she periodically sent me email asking questions about something or other, and I would always respond brusquely because I didn't really care to correspond. But with the persistence that sucked me into ALDAcon slavery, her emails eventually broke through my intransigence. So completely that at ALDAcon 2006 we closed down a 2 o'clock bar a couple blocks from the hotel.

Occasionally Mary writes pieces in ALDA News about her everyday experiences as a deaf parent, calling herself ALDA Mom. They are rambling and lighthearted, while still expressing the oft-repressed truth that deafness ain't much fun. The trip to Maine for her mother's services will be a solemn one for ALDA Mom. I don't know how easily her family communicates with her, but I suspect that too won't be fun. Fortunately she has the support of her immense family of ALDA friends to help see her through. Which reminds me all over again of the fundamental value of ALDA: emotional and psychological support for late-deafened adults when they need it.

Centennial

2008-04-10T19:48:00.011-05:00

Today's entry is dedicated to my father, who would have been 100 years old this week. He was a medical professional, a dentist, and he loved me a lot. But it was love with topspin: Between his many terms of endearment, he periodically would assert that I could do better, that I didn't apply myself, and that, therefore, I might not amount to anything. Then I became an English major in college, and he knew it. When he died at 72 I was an encyclopedia editor, not exactly following in his footsteps.

Today, I am still an encyclopedia editor. In the Age of Wikipedia you don't need an actuary to explain why that's living dangerously. My father would turn in his grave except I already caused him to do that years ago. But I've got some good news for you, Dad; a 100th birthday present, if you will. I've finally amounted to something: I'm on the ALDAcon Sponsorship Committee!

And indeed I am. Lois broke me in very gently, as if she expected me to snap any minute. She discreetly rolled out the list of sponsors from last year's ALDAcon and explained the dollar level at which they had sponsored. It was a pretty impressive list: Sprint, Advanced Bionics, Motorola, Verizon, Ultratec, T-Mobile, AT&T, Cochlear--corporations that would put a smile on the face of any sponsorship chair. Lois was on the committee last year with the indomitable Cheryl Heppner, and they obviously had done a fabulous job. Well, I stood ready to hold the ladder: Go get em, Lois! Show them my name! Let me know when you're done and we'll drink to the memory of Jerry Barnhart.

But no, as I said in an earlier post, I couldn't let her take the blame if my name on the solicitation materials sunk a deal. I really couldn't. So I volunteered to handle some companies on my own. I reviewed the list again, looking for places that I'd feel more or less comfortable approaching. Maybe some sold cheeseburgers, for instance. But alas, most of them were technology companies. So I picked a few that might remember me from the early days of ALDA. My dad would have said that's exactly the wrong strategy, but I had a sudden rush of buoyancy and yes-I-can-ness. Because a couple of organizations on the list were run by people who way back when had come out of nowhere and made me feel blessed to be alive. And those are the people I decided to approach first: CART reporters.

Renegade

2008-04-10T06:02:00.004-05:00

HI ho, HI ho, HI ho, HI ho, HI ho, HI ho, HI ho, HUM!....hi HO! HI ho! It's off to work...OH NO! The first e-mail from Lois Maroney came on a Tuesday night in February. "Hi Bill, I have Kathy copied in. She is going to update the exhibit and sponsorship forms that will appear on the web site with your name and email address...." Oh no no no NO: This meant work was on the way. Wall Street was tanking at about the same time so it was easy to connect the dots... Tuesday night...ALDA work...Black Tuesday. Bad, bad karma.

Kathy was Kathy Schlueter, the ALDAcon 2008 Sponsor and Exhibitor Business Manager. I hadn't been paying close attention to ALDA for years, but every time I did look Kathy seemed to be on the ALDA Board, at least once as President. And now she's President-elect. Some people just don't know the word uncle.

Kathy and I go way back, all the way to ALDAcon I. I guess that's how we inscribed it then: like a Super Bowl, with Roman numerals. Kathy lives in far northwestern Illinois. To come to Chicago for that first Con it took her about as much time to drive as it took Marylyn to fly in from Boston. Kathy was new to deafness then, and living way out there in the, um, sticks she didn't have much of a support network to lean on. I think she'd be the first one to tell you that she came to ALDAcon scared as hell, depressed at being deaf, and low on self-esteem. We needed a crowbar to pry words out of her. And nobody had one.

But Kathy got through that meeting and she kept coming back and she kept coming back. Now she's one of the most vocal and persistent leaders in ALDA. Some people call her the Energizer Bunny, but I've always called her Ren, short for Renegade. I don't remember exactly how that nickname came to be; I suppose it had to do with her being a free spirit who did things her way. She flirted with me, for example. She told me if she wasn't married she'd run away with me. If I had carried my brother's business card I would have presented it to her. He's an eye doctor.

Be that as it may, the once-reticent and uncertain Ren is now one of my mentors on the ALDAcon Sponsorship Committee. The other is Lois Maroney. Stay tuned.

What's in a Name?

2008-04-09T06:45:00.007-05:00

So I agreed to have my name on mailings from the ALDAcon Sponsorship Committee. Well, I could handle that, but I'm thinking: What good will it do? I had my name on Gallaudet diplomas for 11 or 12 years and I don't think anybody but Bob Dorn noticed. Bob was my roommate in Chicago for a while before I got married. He was Big D deaf at heart and I barely knew what Gallaudet was at the time we were roommates. Ten years later, in one of life's greatest miracles, he somehow graduated from Gallaudet, and there was my name on his diploma because I was secretary of the board of trustees by then. He felt I cheapened the diploma; I felt he cheapened the diploma. We probably were both right.

The Sponsorship Committee turned out to actually be one person: Lois Maroney. She lives in Florida and has been involved with ALDA for half a generation, which still makes her mostly AMT (after my time of disappearance 15 years ago). I've only met her twice, I think, but she had obvious energy and commitment. The curse of the volunteer. So it was: Hello again, Lois, feel free to use my name, it won't do you any good. Good luck anyway.

But then the curse started to affect me. I'm a Cubs fan, which means I attract curses. And so it was again: How could I let Lois take the blame when people saw my name on the email and hit the delete key? It wasn't fair to her or to ALDA. I had to at least give people palpable cause to hit delete by approaching them on my own. And thus...the curse was on...

ALDAcon Ambush

2008-04-08T14:09:00.005-05:00

How did this happen? Why am I involved with ALDA again? Why, oh why. For 15 years, except for speeches at two ALDAcons, I've been able to avoid ALDA craziness. I avoided Mary Clark, I avoided Marylyn Howe: These people are certifiably crazy, and I had two young kids who needed me sane. I WAS FINE.

Well, mostly so. I got laid off from my job in Seattle and moved back to Chicago, and that really wasn't so much fun, even though I love Chicago. I mean, I live with my mother-in-law now. Many days, that defines un-fun. And I work from home most of the month and have no interaction with my colleagues at work other than email, IM, and videocon. And I'm living way out in nobody's-ever-heard-of-it Cary, about 40 miles from Chicago, where my two brothers and a lot of old friends live. I hardly ever see them. Maybe I wasn't so fine. But I wasn't crazy.

Then a couple of months ago Mary Clark emailed me and Marylyn Howe. Mary's the planning chair for ALDAcon 2008, poor girl. Being planning chair of a conference is even less fun than living with an in-law. The conference is in Chicago; 20th anniversary of ALDA and all that. I should have deleted Mary's email straightaway. Sure enough, she had come begging. Would Marylyn and/or I help with the conference program book? I don't like to be rude but staying sane is important: I politely said no. I also said no on behalf of Marylyn. Hell, we did enough--way too much--a long time ago. Nearly killed us. We're older now: time to kick back in the La-Z-Boy and on energetic days go golf. So I said no, no thank you.

But Mary Clark, she doesn't take a hint. She asked us to do something else, and I again said no for both of us. Then she asked us to do something else...no, no, no. But now I was going crazy trying to be polite with the no's. So the next time she asked--something about having my name connected with the Sponsorship Committee--I said okay, just so I don't have to do any work. It'll be okay if I don't have to work. Right. But this was ALDA. Crazy ALDA. Uh-oh.