The Beginning

My hearing loss was diagnosed when I was 5 ½ half. I was in kindergarten and taking my third hearing test. The previous two tests I had managed to pass on my own. The first was in preschool; they gave three students the same test at the same time, facing each other. The other students raised their hands in response to a sound, I raised mine by playing “follow the leader”. The following year my neighbor gave me a one-on-one test. Her hand would move, I would raise mine. To this day, even in those sound proof booths, I can tell when I am being watched for an answer, I need to stare in a dark corner to answer solely based on sound. And having tintinitus doesn’t help.

Back to my kindergarten test: it was the kind school children take with blinders blocking them from their testers. Obviously I did not pass. My school, being the concerned school that they were, sent a measly letter home informing my mother of the results. My mother took action and set up an appointment to have my hearing tested. She also called my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Jamison, to notify her that I may have a hearing loss. Mrs. Jamison thanked my mother and hung up the phone. A little while later she called back and told my mother that she whispered behind my back and I can hear perfectly fine, I was just not listening.

Obviously by the mere fact that I am writing this I do have a hearing loss, and my kindergarten sense of self was poor at best. What followed for me was a series of tests, none of which I remember, and a confirmation that I did have a hearing loss: mild/moderate loss in my left ear, moderate in my right, due to a combination of both nerve and bone damage. There was also an emotional test that discovered that I thought I was a bad little girl. What child wouldn’t, being faced with a teacher like Mrs. Jamison? My best friend would whisper to me in class, softly, quietly, being able to accurately judge the sound of her surroundings. I would whisper back, in what I thought was softly and quietly, and quickly get caught. I was labeled a bad child, a slow child, by the second week of school and there was nothing that could be done to change all of this.

Luckily for me I remember very little of kindergarten. At most I remember looking at a peers paper during a test, trying to figure out what the question was in Jeopardy like fashion. My first hearing aids I do remember. Prior to getting my hearing aids I was asked whether I wanted behind the ear hearing aids, or in the ear hearing aids. I chose behind the ears, since that meant to me there would be nothing in my actual ears themselves. I was quite upset when I was presented with these molds for my ears attached to a mechanical portion that went behind my ears. My personality is a bit of a chameleon, so I accepted them and became accustomed quite rapidly. However I did have issues with a shushing background noise that turned out to be a fan in the other room.

I was told that my hearing aids were not toys and explained how to properly take care of them. I took these words to heart and acted out the role of a perfect childhood geek many times in telling peers that if they got my hearing aids wet they would have to pay for new ones. Though I certainly did test those boundaries myself: no sooner than I got my hearing aids did I go outside to play with my neighbor and run through her sprinklers, forgetting that I had my new hearing aids on. I also remember the time I was sitting in the tub, water filling around me, and quickly taking off my hearing aids and handing them to my mom to put on dryer ground.

In all honesty I don’t feel like anything changed for me upon getting my hearings aids. Obviously it helped me to hear but from one day to the next there was no big difference. The only issue I felt was lack of having a peer. In second grade there was a recess aid who had hearing aids herself. I so wanted to look up to her, to connect, but she was the strict kind of aid and there was nothing for seven year-old me to connect to. In fact, it would take me until the age of 18 to meet other people my age with a hearing loss and really come to terms with my ears as my identity. At this age I was what the doctor’s told me I was: hearing impaired.