I CAN'T hear you: My lousy EVIL Plan to take over High School

"Yes," I said.
" Yes is your name?" asked the teacher as everyone around me laughed.
"..Uhm"
"Is there something wrong with you?"
I think NO and YES but MAYBE. I closed my eyes and tried very hard to disappear into thin air.

---

That's how my high-school started, first math hour and the master implementation of my plan to "hear better". Having had meningitis as a kid, my hearing was royally fucked and utterly unfixable. The left ear was basically dead and the right one with deep nerve damage, I KNEW that I couldn't hear better, at least physically. But I schemed and designed strategies to work around it, minimize, ignore and neglect this disadvantage. It was the only way.

Like a magician, I tried to bring people into my world. I've created my own mirrors, I've brought my own smoke: I was paying more attention than everyone, I was reading the body language like a wizard studying arcane texts, I was guessing what people will say before they even started. I was a step ahead. At least in my world where the God was named Raz.

There were times when I felt like that...


To bring this world to be, I had to control the situation, the environment, the message. I had to monopolize the conversation while simultaneously make people enjoy the monopole. That's a lot harder than it seems.
I always had to have a good story to tell, a funny thing to mention, a way to talk about nothing until time ended and a supernova ate us all. The less I had to listen, the less was not to hear, right?

And so, I persevered. I did my homework and worked on my stories, my style, my delivery. I studied what missed and took it off the repertoire, added new stuff and continually testing and testing, furbishing each bit to perfection. I wasn't aware that this is what stand-up comedians do with every show.
It worked surprisingly well. It worked amazingly easy. It worked until it didn't.

--- at this point some of your might see where this is going, I'm sorry I didn't ---

The fact of the matter was that my hearing did not work so whenever people did participate in this ongoing charade of mine, I was at risk. That was the second part of my plan. Usually, I was able to gather the essential and I tried to imagine the rest. I can't tell you how many imagined conversations I had, filling the silent blank with concoctions of my own mind. I danced around the specifics I invented and dove deep into the general until I knew - based on body language, or response - that I was on the subject. Then, I went back to specifics. The person left with the impression that we had a real conversation.
I was left exhausted.

While I was happy that this worked, I was also judging everyone for not seeing through my subterfuges. I wanted people to say " Enough of this!" and when they didn't, I felt victorious, a joker, a god, a fool, nothing at all. Little did I know, my ways were slowly giving me the impostor syndrome.

But of course, whenever I felt too full of myself I was reminded that I am, always, a handicapped. No matter what I did, I could never be ready for spontaneity. A quick unexpected question. A witty remark. Anything that seemed to come out of nowhere, as spontaneity does and boom, I was lost. Sucker punched by ingenuity and fun, I was trying to figure what to say next: admit defeat or risk saying something wise, maybe laugh, maybe a chuckle?. I used to do that, laugh and say "yeah" until someone once said - i found out later - that their grandfather was in the hospital. Apparently, we were talking about something somewhat related. My laughter was not forgiven.

Me, right, in high school

And so, I was forced to face the thing I feared the most: uncertainty. This is the real cancer of being hearing impaired, you're always on your toes, always on guard and never ready. It slowly creeps into everything, every action(am i doing this right?), every answer(i hope this is ok) and eventually: yourself. It takes over your soul and fills it with unanswerable questions: "AM I OK?", "DOES ANYONE CARES?"*
Confidence and self-esteem praised as foundation bricks of every successful individual, cower in a corner for me. I was left fighting with weapons without ammo and had to fake the confidence of Rambo. It wasn't ideal.

People evolved with the tribe mentality, different wasn't good, different was dangerous and I believe we have an immense capability of sniffing out "different". No matter what, how, or how well is hidden, you detect something is askew. Even if you don't know what: does he talk too fast? Is that a bizarre accent? There's a certain weird fluidity about his movements? You hear people say " My gut instinct told me something was wrong.." and they were probably right.
Yes, today, the ads are yelling at us "BE DIFFERENT!" or "DARE TO BE DIFFERENT!!!" but the subtext is, be different in drinking Pepsi vs Coke, not give up soda altogether you weirdo! Be different but not TOO Different.

Walking around the high-school, I felt the "different" sign burned in my DNA, my movements, my answers and even my word choices singled me out. I felt like I was signaling my anomaly everywhere. But I carried on, what else was I to do?

end of part 1.