Commentary: Anything But Silent by Mark Drolsbaugh
A few years ago, I went to dinner with a Deaf woman who worked intermittently with my partner at his workplace. I’d recently expressed an interest in learning ASL (American Sign Language) and so when MJ (not her real name) came to Pittsburgh again, my partner set up a dinner date. I have to admit: I was nervous. I had met Deaf people before, but I’d never had the opportunity to talk at-length with them. I didn’t want my lack of knowledge about ASL or Deaf culture to sour the evening.
We met up with MJ at a local bar— the smell of delicious grease in the air. We sat at a booth and MJ pulled a notebook out of her purse, along with a pen. Noticing it immediately, I breathed a sigh of relief— phew, she already expected me to not know her language and so I didn’t have to disappoint her with poor signing skills. But, to my mixed delight and terror, MJ encouraged me to learn signs from her over the course of the conversation. The notebook lay between us like a raft in the middle of the ocean. We ventured out into the waves, MJ demonstrating saint-like patience as I stumbled through our conversations. She read lips and I did my best to utilize the signs she shared with me along with voicing out loud. She voiced occasionally as well. But when we’d venture too far from the raft for either of us to continue, we paddled back and hoisted ourselves into the safe zone and used the notebook.
After dinner, she led us to another bar just a few blocks down the road and introduced us to a hearing bartender— a friend of hers— who was also learning ASL. Unexpectedly, I witnessed a web of interconnected people, tied by ASL and/or by Deaf culture— a web invisible to me just a few hours prior. Who knew!? I chuckle now as I write this, nearly three years later. A hearing person washing up miraculously on the shores of Deaf culture, shocked that an entire other world existed within my own?— what a riot.
At the end of an evening filled with laughter, awkward tensions, miscommunications, and love, MJ shared resources with me, resources that would help me learn ASL and learn more about being Deaf. One of the resources MJ shared with me was the name Mark Drolsbaugh.
Mark Drolsbaugh is a Deaf writer and an educator at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. I chose to read Anything But Silent— a collection of his articles about deafness— before embarking on his other titles. His sense of humor and wit offered me a joyful space to learn, especially compared to the *serious voice* scholarly non-fiction I’d been reading up until that point. Given the compilation was published in 2004, the book is definitely dated (see the cover image). But Drolsbaugh’s perspective and voice are ever-relevant. I actually found the dated references quite amusing in and of themselves! (I’m sure if Drolsbaugh ever read this he would begrudgingly agree— with no small amount of bemused sarcasm.) His articles span the experience of being Deaf in America (well, being a Deaf white man in America). He shares both insightful and funny stories about karate as a confidence-building tool for Deaf kids, being “on the fence” as a Hard-of-Hearing person, life as a Super Phony, as he calls himself, (finding ways to pass as hearing around hearing folks), misunderstandings about ASL, cochlear implants, and much more.
But my favorite article of them all was “Ooh, My Back” about the physiological impacts of straining to hear and straining to be heard.
“I never realized being hard-of-hearing was so exhausting.”
Just a little background: Drolsbaugh shares his experience with us as a hard-of-hearing child who became Deaf as he grew up. As a hard-of-hearing child, he spoke English before learning ASL. He calls himself culturally deaf because “… there once was a time when I was not quite hearing and not quite Deaf.” He recalls being hard-of-hearing, but he had since forgotten how exhausting it was.
In 2002, Drolsbaugh attended a mental health professionals’ workshop, where a Dr. Samuel Trychin gave a keynote about the lesser-known physical effects of being hard-of-hearing.
“The mental stress of constantly trying to keep up with what people are saying can bring forth some very real problems such as muscle tension, fatigue, high blood pressure, anxiety, irritability, and much more.”
Drolsbaugh also references a Dr. John Sarno, who wrote a book called Healing Back Pain, in which he labels stress-induced back pain as Tension Myositis Syndrome. Drolsbaugh links this with his experiences and calls it Hard of Hearing Tension Myositis Syndrome. To Drolsbaugh’s point, Dr. Trychin argues that the hard-of-hearing feel “totally responsible for communication” and, therefore, the burden of accommodating everyone for a seamless flow of conversation falls on their shoulders… literally.
In the end, Drolsbaugh’s take-away was that we all have to meet one another half-way to communicate. It can’t be one person’s burden to accommodate everyone in the conversation.
This is a lesson I’ve been grappling with personally outside the scope of language, particularly with reference to conflicting beliefs and politics. How do we meet one another half-way in conversations about things as dark and complicated as White Supremacy? How do we honor one another so that the conversation doesn’t hurl us at opposite ends of the spectrum? How do we make sacred the half-way point? I’m not advocating at all for the middle ground or for being moderate. Rather, I’m speaking to a methodology for discussing really challenging things with people who don’t understand the other’s perspective. No matter what we are talking about, it’s all communication.
Drolsbaugh uses the example of a big mustache concealing the lips of a hearing person who is speaking. The mustache makes it hard to lip-read and so a Deaf person might have to repeatedly ask the person to repeat what they said or to write it down. If the mustached person gets mad about being asked to write down what they are saying, then they aren’t meeting the other person half way. If I ask someone to have a conversation with me about anti-racism and they don’t yet have a basic understanding of what privilege is, then I’m not meeting them halfway; I’m asking them to leap off a cliff and hope that they land.
The reason I so appreciated this article was because it tied together two things I thought were separate— Deaf-Hearing communication and political dialogue methodology— but ultimately they both require meeting someone half way.
Throughout the book, Drolsbaugh’s humor runs rampant. While reading, my mind returned over and over again to my dinner date with MJ a few years ago. I questioned whether or not I’d met her half-way. I think only she could tell you that. But I was also reminded of MJ’s incredible sense of humor, mirrored in Drolsbaugh’s own.
Meeting someone half way, I think, requires a sense of humor— an ability to laugh at one’s own mistakes and to find moments of joy in awkward, challenging conversations. The process of determining where someone else’s halfway point is in relation to your own is a problem solving skill, where some degree of creativity is required. I think it’s the wellspring of creativity where humor is born. To see the world from multiple points of view puts things in perspective. Your problems seen from another angle could sparkle with the slightest hint of comedy. Comedy and tragedy are separated by a thread, after all. I believe that the creativity required of Deaf people to manage the bullshit of the hearing world, while also living in and enjoying the Deaf world induces in many a sense of humor. And I don’t think Deaf people are alone in that sense. Humor, I know, is similarly important for Jews like me. A Trans, queer Jew who is observant? I laugh at it all the time— the seeming impossibility of it. But I’m here aren’t I? To figure out moment-to-moment how to be both Jewish and Trans at the same time requires creativity and a sense of humor. I’m not always going to be seen with humanity. I’m not always going to be accepted. I’m not always going to feel included or wanted. I get lots of awkward questions about my body. To look a Jewish elder in the eyes while they ask about your genitals is… well… funny. I laugh at the tense experience of being met half-way and I laugh at myself meeting them half-way. It’s why I don’t take myself too seriously. Life’s too short.