Author: Karen Putz

Yesterday I said goodbye to Barb, my friend and neighbor. Barb and I met through another neighbor, Denise. Our backyards faced each other and one evening, Denise introduced us. Barb and I were pregnant–she with twin boys and me with my youngest son Steven.

We had our babies, and over the years, all of the kids played together. Between the three of us, we had nine kids (make that ten–my niece joined us for two years). Seven of them were close in age and Denise had two older boys. We had many evenings of sitting in our backyards exhausted as we watched the kids run circles around us. Most often than not, we ended up in my backyard with the kids bouncing in the trampoline and swimming in an inflatible pool. We would occasionally order pizza or toss some hot dogs on the grill. On a few summer nights, we ladies filled our glasses with wine and the husbands joined us.

We moved just two blocks over and our sense of community shifted. Suddenly, it wasn’t as easy to get together and play dates had to be arranged to make sure one was home. Gone were the days of opening the sliding door and sending the kids down the backyard. We still gathered the kids together for pizza nights but it definitely was harder as the kids got older and were involved in various activities. I still stopped at Barb’s and Denise’s houses after dropping the kids off at school and we would have our morning chats.

So it was hard to say goodbye to Barb yesterday as she prepared to head out to her new life in California. They are moving out west for a new job and to be closer to her husband’s family. I’m going to miss the weekly chats and lunches out.

This goodbye certainly isn’t final, thankfully today we have email and videocameras.

And there certainly is a bright spot: Denise and I have figured that we have a great place to stay when we need a weekend away!

Terry Starbucker over at A Glass Half Full has invited me to participate in a little “future dreaming.” This meme was started by April Groves who wrote:

I introduce to you, the “Opi.” Comes from the Greek word “opiso.” Now, I am no Greek scholar so I maybe way off…but I searched for “future you” in a greek dictionary, this word popped up and I liked it, so I used it. It refers to the hereafter. The Opi is to be written of the future you in the present tense.

So here I am, ten years later:

I’m sitting in the swing on my backyard patio watching the sunset. My oldest son is 24 and has just graduated from college with his degree in chemical engineering. My middle child is visiting her best friend in Texas during her summer break from college. My thoughts turn to my youngest son– he is now almost twenty. Where have the years gone?

I’ve accomplished more than I thought I would in ten short years. I’m now on my third book and the book tours have been an enjoyable means of seeing the world. Hands & Voices has grown to a large organization that is now found in several countries. Everyone involved in the organization has recognized the value of each and every deaf and hard of hearing child and the communication methodolgy wars are a thing of the past. We’ve broken through the reading barrier and the average deaf child now reads at grade level.

The hubby and I are celebrating over thirty years of togetherness. We’ve been married 28 years and have grown to love each other with a comforting deepness. In the past years, he has learned to curb his habit of making me wait for him every time we need to leave the house. He no longer leaves the newspaper piled up for weeks. His provides daily massages and has become a skilled chef. My days are now filled with relaxed muscles and incredible meals. He has hired a crew for weekly house cleaning and I haven’t touched the vacuum nor mop in years. (Hey, I’m really liking this dream stuff.)

The sun is waning in the sky and I take a sip of my frozen margarita. The last ten years of life have indeed been very good.

I look forward to the next ten.

This must be the week of crazy lawsuits–we now have a Michigan woman suing the makers of Starburst candy because–are you ready for this…

The candy is too chewy.

Apparently the gal bit into a lemon Starburst and after three chews, the candy stuck to her teeth and locked her jaw. She now suffers from Temporal Mandibular Joint Dysfunction. She declined any offers from the candy company to pay for her jaw rehabilitation.

As the company lawyer said, you think maybe one could get a clue from the packaging–it does say “Fruit Chews.”

Remember the $65 million dollar lawsuit over a pair of pants?

Roy Pearson lost.

It looks like he will have to dig deep into his pants to cover the court costs for this silly lawsuit that he dreamed up.

There is justice after all.

Yesterday, the Tampa Bay Hearing and Balance Center showcased a live video of a cochlear implant surgery:

Cochlear Implant Surgery

Warning: this is not for the faint of heart.

Remember Erma Bombeck and her short, witty sense of humor?

Well, Marti Lawrence has the same brand of humor with a twist: she comes from the hills of Missouri. My parents and all of my siblings are from the same state. My brothers and sisters have memories of outhouses and second floor bedrooms with no heat. I was the only one fortunate enough to be born in the culturally advanced city of Chicago.

I can’t remember how I first “met” Marti online, but I quickly took a liking to her blog, Enter the Laughter and left a comment. Somehow, we started chatting via email and she was kind enough to send me her book.

Marti Lawrence shares tales of her life in Queen Klutz, a collection of mishaps surrounding her inability to get through life without breaking a few bones. You will find yourself with mixed emotions– one moment you’ll be breaking out in laughter and the next moment you’ll be clutching your heart thinking, “This poor gal, what a life!”

Marti calls herself a “blutz,” which is a klutz who has bad luck. And somehow, this bad luck traveled through the mail to my friend Groovy, who slipped on the steps on her way to the mailbox.

So if you’re looking for a light-hearted read with a couple of chuckles thrown in, grab a copy of Queen Klutz. If you’re lucky, Marti will autograph it!

Update:
I went to pick up Marti’s book from a table and stubbed my toe!

Back in February, I started interviewing families and deaf adults with cochlear implants for an upcoming article in the Hands & Voices Communicator. The idea for this article came about when my daughter’s friend had an implant that suddenly stopped working. It was a tough journey for her to be re-implanted and adjust to new mappings. She is now enjoying her Beatles music through her implant again.

If you recall from my previous post, I took some criticsm for attempting to write this article.

It was one of the hardest articles I’ve ever written.

Twists and Turns: Journeys with Implants is available in the current Hands & Voices Communicator. Join Hands & Voices and receive quarterly issues of this excellent newsletter.

Here’s an excerpt from Twists and Turns:

“Families who choose implants are set up to either succeed with the implant, or fail,” said Susan Raad, owner of Communication Clubhouse in Illinois and mom to two deaf and hard of hearing children.

She shakes her head.

Angie Lee from What Floats My Boat has bestowed the Thinking Blogger Award on this humble blog. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get my hair done and pick out my evening gown. And a speech, I must have a speech!

All kidding aside, while reading Angie Lee’s blog, I came across her poem about American Sign Language. Angie Lee’s husband, son and step-daughter are deaf. Here’s what she wrote:

Seeing your hands in conversation
Is witnessing the most beautiful symphony ever composed.
A world full of words
Dancing gracefully from your fingertips . . .
Music in motion,
A melody I see with my eyes and hear with my heart. . .
And having listened, I now know the meaning of harmony.

Beautiful!

So of course, this got me to thinking about other blogs that make ME think:

Glenda Watson Hyatt at I’ll Do It Myself

Phil Gerbyshak at Make It Great!

Wendy Piersall at Emoms At Home

Mark Drolsbaugh at Drolz Uncensored

Terry Starbucker from Ramblings of a Glass Half Full

Dawn Colclasure from Dawn Colclasure’s Blog

Check them out– you’ll enjoy the read!

Once upon a time, Douglas Warlick and Donald Ramsell were friends. The two lawyers from a western suburb of Chicago, attended Bears games together for over twenty years.

Back in 1985, Warlick purchased four Bears season tickets in his name. Just four years ago, Ramsell began purchasing two of the tickets from Warlick in an “agreement” that the two friends struck up to split costs. No contract was signed nor anything written down.

The friendship began to go sour, and on May 30th of this year, Ramsell filed a lawsuit in court to formally obtain his half of the tickets.

Warlick, in a recent Chicago Tribune article, summed the situation up perfectly: “I’m still in shock — that’s so obnoxious, so immature,” he said. “He could’ve just picked up the phone. I think ‘sad’ is an appropriate word for somebody who does something like that.”

Stephen Hopson, over at Adversity University, has tagged me for a post on the Secrets of Overcoming Adversity. I thought I’d share about a tough time in my life which actually turned into a blessing:

I grew up as a “solitaire”, a term that Gina Oliva, author of Alone in the Mainstream uses to describe a deaf or hard of hearing child who is the only one in a school of hearing students.

Born with normal hearing, I became hard of hearing in elementary school and obtained my first hearing aid at the age of nine. By the time I started middle school, I was lipreading my teachers and fellow students and fooling everyone into thinking that I could hear pretty well.

I was even fooling myself.

When I was in eighth grade, it became apparent to my mom that I needed more help in school. Up to that point, I was getting yearly hearing tests and speech therapy–that was the extent of my “support services” at school. My mother tried to convince me to attend a local high school that had a program serving deaf students. The students used sign language interpreters.

“No way,” I told my mom. “I’m going to attend the same high school with all of my hearing friends. I’m not deaf.”

Never mind the fact that I couldn’t use the telephone nor follow group conversations. Every day, after school, I took my hearing aid off and kept it off each summer. The hearing aid often gave me headaches and it didn’t contribute much to my understanding of speech. I was relying nearly 100% on my ability to lipread.

So off I went to high school. I was fortunate to have a group of friends who I could communicate with. I hung out with a couple of girls from the swim team and I fell in love with a boy on the guys’ swim team. The telephone was a nightmare for me. Since my mom was deaf, I often had to wait until my father arrived home from work and asked him to make phone calls for me. If he was in a cranky mood, I was out of luck. I quickly learned to ask my local friends down the block to make calls for me. It sure wasn’t fun communicating through a third party to set up dates.

I quickly became the “Queen of Social Bluffing” in high school. It was the only way to save face; if a bunch of people at a party were laughing together, you’d find me laughing right along. Heaven forbid if anyone came in and asked me, “What’s everyone laughing about?” I’d mumble something and head off to the bathroom.

After I graduated from high school, I attended a local community college. I applied for jobs around town and ended up working at a neighbor’s restaurant washing dishes. I also babysat for extra money. Even though I still had my core group of friends, I found myself feeling lonely. I could communicate one-on-one just fine, but I sure wasn’t having much fun at parties. At one point, I stopped going out at night because it was too hard to communicate in the dark or even with a single light on in a car.

I had visited Northern Illinois University during my senior year in high school and saw that they had two floors in a co-ed dorm filled with deaf and hard of hearing students. Instead of jumping at the chance to go away to college and meet other deaf and hard of hearing students, I turned it down for the same reason as I turned down the high school program: I didn’t know American Sign Language. I didn’t need it. I was doing just fine bluffing my way through life, thankyouverymuch.

By the end of my first year at the community college, I knew I needed to go away to college. Going away was going to be my only ticket out of the house, because I couldn’t seem to find a job that was going to get me an apartment. So I applied to NIU and I was accepted.

That summer, I was barefooting (waterskiing on bare feet) a lot on Christie Lake. One day, I turned to cross the wake and fell. I slammed into the water sideways–there was no time to tuck and roll. I was a little sore afterwards and my ears felt as if they were filled with water and I couldn’t hear. In the past, I could shake my head and blow my ears and I would be fine. This time, nothing happened. I just shrugged it off, thinking it would clear up later.

The day I headed out to NIU, I still couldn’t hear. Just before heading out the door, I started bawling. My mom was upset enough about having her youngest go off to college, so she urged me to reconsider. “You can stay here and finish college!” I shook my head and we headed off.

As it turned out, becoming deaf was a blessing in disguise. While I mourned the loss of hearing and had to get used to wearing a hearing aid 24/7, I was also learning a new visual language and discovering a whole group of deaf and hard of hearing people to communicate with. I met my husband and fell in love, not only with him but with a whole group of friends that I still hang around with today.

So today, I feel blessed to have deaf, hard of hearing and hearing friends and the ability to communicate with them all.

I’m passing the Secrets of Overcoming Adversity baton on to Dawn Colclasure. Here’s her entry: Being a Burn Survivor.

Note: It is with great sadness that I share the news that Gina Oliva’s husband recently passed away.