The Gifts of Selective Hearing - By Isabel Lerma
A few years ago, my best friend Rebecca,recorded me singing her favorite Disney song at the pool with this lady I justmet who is a sign language interpreter. I usually have a strict “please do notpost any videos of me singing” policy but this time I relented and said shecould make it public. Surprisingly, it started to go locally viral. We ended upgetting contacted by AI media who has a FB group of over a million people. Theyasked if they could put a Disney themed frame and subtitle it as their primary audienceis for the deaf, hard of hearing and their loved ones. Three videos later andour top videos are over 347k views in a few weeks.
We were elated at the flood of comments inthe posts mostly thanking us and commending us both for our artistry but ofcourse a few stood out because of how triggered my sign language interpreterwas. No matter how much we told her not to listen to the few that were criticalof her signing, she still decided to quit. I was disappointed to say the leastand didn’t think I could continue because I’d never publicly embraced the factthat I am hard of hearing. But I heard so many stories posted in the AI mediagroup of how Deaf and HOH people were treated disrespectfully or ostracized forbeing different and it brought up a lot of bullying in my past. I thought somany times of sharing my story but I didn’t because I didn’t think I wascredible. To the outside world, I could pass as hearing abled and it would onlybe after some time that people would realize that I was HOH. I even got aregular weekend gig as a professional singer for a few months before theshutdown and I was making about $300-600 / weekend for just a few hours work.
This was the first time that I was paid tosing professionally. All of a sudden, my fears of being found out as HOH flaredup because I was being paid to sing. I thought I had to be perfect. My issuesof being able to pass myself off as fully hearing abled went on high alert. Iwas so conscious of being off key because when I was younger I was made fun of withmy speech impediment by kids and adults. People still comment on it to this dayand it’s barely noticeable except when I get very excited, talk too loud andtoo fast. My gig was about a 45 minute drive without traffic so I didn’t have alot of moral support either as my friends and family could only come a fewtimes.
The thing is there are so many levels tobeing deaf and hard of hearing. I had always shunned my hearing disability. Ipretended it didn’t exist and half the time, I adapted so well that when Ifinally got in front of an audiologist, he concluded that I have Selective Hearing.He put me on a very expensive hearing aid and I hated it because it amplifiedso much background noise that I couldn’t focus. He tried to explain to myparents that I had learned to adapt to my hearing loss but all they heard wasSelective Hearing. They thought I’d been faking it. So many people thought Iwas faking it, because they would “test” me to see if I could hear them. And itreally is confusing because sometimes I could hear them and sometimes Icouldn’t. It was hard to explain to people that I had to see their faces inorder to hear them, I had to break my undivided attention and focus on whateverwas in front of me before I could hear them.
I met another woman who is HOH and does notwear a hearing aid either simply because she can’t afford a 10k hearing aidthat can distinguish the frequencies she has trouble hearing. She taught meabout cookie hearing. Where you can hear certain high and low frequencies, but notthe middle frequencies which are where most speaking frequencies are. On a graphit looks just like a cookie bite. This sounds like me although it was diagnosedas Selective hearing. Sometimes I could hear very well, and other times, itsounds like I’m hearing everything under water. It can be challenging being caught inbetween the hearing and non-hearing world. I’m not hard of hearing enough ordeaf enough to be hearing disabled but I’m not fully accepted in the hearingworld either. My childhood and adulthood has shown me many times, how beinghard of hearing, could place me as the butt of the joke, so I learned to adaptand make fun of my hearing first and I developed a set of super powers to“enhance” my hearing by tuning out distractions, speed reading, sitting in thefront and self-taught myself to read lips. This really was honed in by my loveof reading which became my escape from the bullies. I didn’t care anymore whenmy books gave me freedom, creativity and imagination. I would have my head in abook even walking to the restroom as a little kid, and I was in love with libraries.Whatever money I could scrounge up as a little kid, any dollar I was given forcandy, was safely stored away so I could buy as many of my abridged classicbooks I was obsessed with. In reading, I learned how to tune out the rest ofthe world and ultra focus. I wouldn’t hear anyone calling me and I could alwaysexcuse it by being so engrossed in the story.
Singing was a different vehicle ofexpression for me. When I was born, it took a while for my parents to realizethere was something wrong with my hearing. I was a pretty spoiled child and Ihad no idea that I was speaking my own language and no one could understand me.My mother would tell me stories of how her friends would ask me to sing anddance and try not to laugh at me as I, blissfully ignorant, belted my made uplanguage at the top of my lungs as my mother glared at her friends. She tells mea story, when I was 2 or 3 years old, of how I was obsessed with “Tanny Yaw”and I would ask over and over for it and they had no idea what I was talkingabout. It wasn’t til a year later, when they took me to the mall that Iexcitedly started to yell “Tanny Yaw, Tanny Yaw” that they understood I meant“Santa Claus”. It was what got my parents to get me a tutor and she helped meso much in focusing and enunciating in English that I became valedictorian inmy preschool.
We ended up moving to Saipan and theprivate school they took me to, told them that I needed to be pushed back asthey didn’t think I could handle 1st grade academically but mymother told them to test me. They ended up having me skip 1st gradeentirely. We ended up leaving the school after the teacher punched me in thenose for not paying attention and I’m so grateful because I loved my newschool. I read Little Women for the first time by Louisa May Alcott and I devouredall the classics I could from Dickens, Dumas, etc., and I dreamed of being anovelist like Jo. I was addicted to books and when it came time that we weremoving to Guam, my parents tried to throw the books away and I fished them outof the dumpster crying and begging my parents to throw all my toys, clothes,etc,. anything but my books. They relented and shipped most of my collectioneven though my eyes had already been strained from too much reading and thedoctor had told them to forbid me from reading.
My new school was not as supportive of mybook reading as the last one. In fact this was where bullying was a whole newlevel of challenge. I wore Urkel glasses that I realize now was way ahead ofits time, looked down whenever anyone greeted me and still preferred books topeople. My speech impediment was not as prominent as when I was young but itwas still there. My hearing also affected me such as in the spelling bee whereI ended up as the backup champion but I just couldn’t hear the word they were askingme to spell. I was put on a needs improvement class because my grades had justslipped entirely and I was angry, depressed and suicidal from the bullying andother things that happened in my childhood. Some of my teachers encouraged my bulliesbut the others were my biggest supporters and for that I’ll always be grateful.I started writing essays and some of them were being published in the localnewspapers and even competed in school. I still remember Mrs. Lacno, my mathand choir teacher who loved me and tried to protect me from the worst of it.She was so angry that it wasn’t just the students but staff who were joiningin. The bullying had gotten pretty bad especially coming from the group Ithought were my friends the summer before high school. I am so grateful now forthat because it got me to make a decision. That high school was a fresh start.Gone were the Urkel glasses and looking down when people talked to me or alwayshaving my head in a book.
This time I joined every club/organizationI wanted to which was almost every single one, from Student Council, MockTrial, National Forensic League, JSA, JA, NHS, Tennis, Cross Country and justtoo many to list. I took 5 AP courses and my first year I was a 4.2 GPA and #6in the class. I talked to everyone and supported my best friend in high schoolas President of our freshman class. I had a new group of friends, became asocial butterfly and smiled at everyone.
The bullies from my old MS were greatlyoutnumbered and some even tried to be included in my group. It took a while butI did become grateful that they had pushed me out of my shell. I remember anold bully of mine seeing an ad for a television host for the Academic ChallengeBowl. She came up to me as I was looking at the ad and told me that she wasgoing to get the part so that I shouldn’t even bother trying. I smiled andnodded but inside I was seething. I was no longer the pushover she thought Iwas, in fact I went home, put on a suit, practiced my lines and got the part onthe spot. I was on the tennis team when we wereapproached by an agent who told us that the Chanel store in Tamuning, Guam wasputting out their first fashion show and I would get paid $200. I went andthought I embarrassed myself because I did not look anything like I thought amodel was supposed to look. It turns out, they were in love with my walk andasked me to teach the other models how to walk like me. I ended up modellingall over the island for various businesses and was the most booked model in myagency.
My agent sent me to a commercial auditionfor the Sunset Cruise which is a 60 second commercial that aired every hour onour 24 hour Travel Channel as tourism is Guam’s #1 industry. I would usuallyget fat shamed by the competition during the auditions and a snarky remark asto how they were going to get the part over me. I still remember this Koreanmodel telling me how she modeled topless at this fashion show, that theproducers loved her and that she knew for sure she would get the part. Again, Iseethed inside, but with a smile on my face told her that I told my agent Ididn’t think they would pick me either. I walked in with new found confidence,charmed the director and got the part. That anger my bullies sourced inside me,made me want to try harder. To do more than what I would have done and show upas confident and capable. I practiced enunciating over and over again just likemy tutor taught me when I was young. I went early to every audition and tapingof the show and worked with the producer on the questions. I negotiated with myfavorite store to sponsor all my outfits so I could look professional on TV. Iwent to a year’s worth of meets during the National Forensic League withoutcompeting because I was so scared of performing and finally at the very lastmeet of the year I won first place acting out the balcony scene of Romeo &Juliet. The following year my partner and I wrote a piece, published it under apseudonym and I won the National competition in Hawaii and later representedGuam in Arizona. I was the only one on Team Guam that year to double enter in 2categories and win in both. Getting back to Guam we performed our winningpieces at the mall and was recognized in the papers as the champions who hadknocked off the California team who used to win every year. My favorite memorythough is when I was asked to perform my original oratory piece in front of thewhole school. My partner refused to do our duo piece because she thought wewould get made fun of. I decided to do my original piece which was onParkinson’s disease but the twist was that I acted out Muhammad Ali during hisglory days to showcase someone we all knew who is going through the disease.When I finished my speech with the lines “Fly like a butterfly, and sting likea bee” the entire auditorium erupted in a standing ovation. The roar of 400feet stomping, applause and cheers from my peers and teachers. I remember beingin awe of that experience and looking back on the journey of not being able tospeak clearly or be understood all the way to being celebrated for my voice. This piece started out as a way to look atmy selective hearing and the gifts that it gave me. Even as I mentally filledin the blanks incorrectly when I couldn’t hear it, even as I now realize howoften I mishear and make a snap judgement, even as to how it’s helped me becomea better communicator, all I can do is be grateful for it. As my new friendtold me yesterday, “People will try to fix you but you’re not broken.” My selective hearing has helped me in somany ways. To sing, to speak, to communicate and connect. I’d always seen it asdifficult to be caught in two worlds when it has given me the advantage ofknowing what it’s like and how to adapt. It’s given me the courage and self-loveto stand up for what I want and go for what I want regardless of what anyonethinks or says. It’s attracted the most amazing people in my life who don’ttreat me like I’m broken. It’s a challenge sometimes but there are alwaysoptions. Selective hearing is kind of my superpower after all. Thank you to myparents for giving me this gift that has given me so many incredibleexperiences and shaped who I am today. A writing coach who helps other peopletap into the power of their creativity utilizing the Lerma Therapeutic WritingMethod. The things we tell ourselves that stop us, might be the very thingsthat propel us. Thank you for listening to my story, I can’t wait to hearyours. Please join me at DrunkWriters.com and let me show you how to unlockyour superpowers today. Below are some links to what I reference inthe blog:
https://bit.ly/LittleMermaidwASL
https://bit.ly/RW2014DrunkWriters
https://bit.ly/UninhibitedCreativity