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Mark Drolsbaugh, author of Deaf Again and Anything But Silent has written a new book: On The Fence: The Hidden World of the Hard of Hearing.

The stories (I have contributed mine in this book) and poems contributed by thirty-seven writers show a variety of experiences including what it is like to be “on the fence”–between people who are cuturally Deaf and people with normal hearing.

“Living with even just a little hearing loss,” writes Mark in the book, “is without a doubt one of the most invisible, forgotten, isolating, and misunderstood life experiences which humans can go through. It is as if life slams a glass door in the face of hard of hearing people, putting them in a situation where they can see life happening around them but have little chance to participate.”

I experienced my own “on the fence” period when I first transferred to Northern Illinois University. I grew up hard of hearing, with no knowledge of American Sign Language or contact with the deaf community. The summer before I transferred, I became profoundly deaf. At Northern, I was surrounded by many students who were deaf and hard of hearing and began to learn ASL. So for a while there, I tried to figure out who I was and where I fit in.

Today, some people percieve me as being “on the fence” as a hard of hearing person. Some say I’m deaf, others say I’m Deaf. It’s a matter of perspective and where the person is coming from.

The way I see it, everyone without hearing in the normal range is in this together. Diversity is a good thing.

So grab your copy of On The Fence here and check out the variety of perspectives and stories.

It’s a new year and with every new year, I’m always determined to make some positive changes. I always have the same vows: I will take control of the messes in my house, learn to effectively use my time and sculpt my body in the likeness of Christie Brinkley’s.

The same resolutions keep popping up year after year. I guess I’m not very effective at accomplishing them. However, the Putz household experienced a rare phenomenon recently. Take a look:

Yes, I managed to discover the bottom of the sink. It was a startling sight to see it empty. One of the tips at Flylady.com is to accomplish this very feat each day. The idea is that you will clean your sink, go to bed with a sense of accomplishment and wake up the next morning with a shining sink.

Ah, but I overlooked some very critical information in her Babysteps suggestion about the sink: you have to train everyone else in the household to embrace shiny sinks.

I forgot to notify everyone else in the Putz household of the importance of shiny sinks. Silly me.

So I woke up to half of the contents of my kitchen cabinets piled in the sink, courtesy of five kids and a 22-year old niece.

And it’s only 8:30 a.m.

Let the training begin.

My friend Lisa works at Jewel Food Stores as a cashier. She was born profoundly deaf but was able to benefit from hearing aids while growing up. Two years ago, her ability to use her hearing aids suddenly stopped and she obtained a cochlear implant. She is slowly learning to use the phone again but the majority of her communication understanding comes via lipreading/speechreading.

She started at Jewel bagging groceries and within a short time, she was promoted to cashier. She wears a nameplate that lets customers know that they must face her when speaking.

One day, she had a tall customer with white hair who looked remarkably like Cruella, the mean lady from 101 Dalmations. The customer asked for cash back in the amount of just a dollar. “I thought that was odd,” said Lisa. “Usually people ask for ten or twenty dollar amounts.”

As she finished ringing up the sale, the customer looked at Lisa and demanded her book of stamps.

Lisa apologized for missing her request, explaining that she was deaf and didn’t hear her.

“Then why are you working here?” the customer said loudly.

Lisa stared at her in shock, but quickly recovered.

“Excuse me, lady!” she shot back. “That’s discrimination! I worked my way up and I deserve this job!”

After “Cruella” took off, the customer behind her remarked, “I can’t believe there are still some people like that!”

Needless to say, “Cruella” no longer gets in Lisa’s line when she does her weekly shopping.

Twice in the last several weeks, I have volunteered my time at the local Bingo hall. In exchange for my time selling tickets, I received a discount on my daughter’s volleyball team fee.

There were about sixty people in attendance and from 5:30 to 9 p.m., my job was to walk around the room and sell tickets for various games and raffles. Many of the people who were at my first session were also at the second session, several weeks apart. Apparently Bingo is quite entertaining to these folks.

The tickets were simple enough at first. Each ticket sold for a dollar. As I walked around the room, people would either ask, “I’d like some tickets” or they would motion for me to come over. What I wasn’t aware of, was that each ticket had different strategies for winning. For example, a “B row” ticket had to turn up the numbers seven and eleven to win. “Treasure Island” required a two in the first number to win. Apparently this was explained while I was hanging up my coat and putting on my Bingo apron.

I quickly learned that I was missing some information the first time someone asked, “What’s the numbers?” Since I had no clue what was being asked, I didn’t understand the question and asked the person to repeat it, explaining that I was deaf. “What numbers am I looking for to win?” she grumbled. I had to quickly scramble to gather the information and figure out what I was supposed to know.

Bingo is serious business. A large amount of money is spent among just a few participants. Many of the regulars brought in colored Bingo bottles to stamp their cards with, often carried in a round Bingo bag with a slot for each bottle. One lady actually had a small bag on wheels. A few patrons display lucky charms to increase their luck. Some of the older folks brought in their dinner and read the newspaper in between games. One couple played cards while simultaneously stamping their Bingo cards– talk about multi-tasking!

It was interesting dealing with so many different people. Most of time, selling the tickets went without incident as I was able to lipread the majority of the requests. If I didn’t understand the amount, I would look at the amount of money being tossed over and then confirm the number of tickets verbally. There were a few people who automatically took me down a few IQ notches when I would explain that I was deaf and needed a question repeated. They would become impatient and avoid buying tickets from me. Others adapted by holding up their fingers to show the amount they wanted whenever I would come near. One guy seemed to feel sorry for me, he responded with a sad-looking “Oh…” when I explained that I was deaf.

And he probably bought more tickets than he wanted to.

Time as I’ve known it
Doesn’t take much time to pass by me
Minutes into days
Turn into months
Turn into years
They hurry by me

I was cleaning out a drawer full of pictures and I came across an envelope with several pictures inside. The pictures were of Tod Morris and my husband, just a few weeks before Tod’s life ended.

As I gazed at the pictures, I started getting some flashbacks of memories. Tod was my husband’s buddy, a big guy with a huge smile and a distinctive laugh. As deaf as we were, we could pick out Tod’s laugh in a room full of people. He had a gutteral laugh, a series of “heh, heh, heh, heh” that would make you chuckle in response. Whenever someone would describe Tod to another person, they never failed to imitate his laugh using signs and facial expressions.

I met Tod when I was just learning to sign. I had just become profoundly deaf the summer before and was easily intimidated by my husband’s friends that first year. My husband’s friend Mike, also a buddy of Tod’s, was a speed demon with his mouth as well as his signing. Occasionally, Joe and Tod would interpret what Mike was saying/signing so that I could keep up.

Every Christmas break, Tod would hang out at Joe’s house and we would watch movies together. An athlete who was always in motion, Tod would poke at my stomach and berate me to do sit-ups. “Don’t you want to have a flat stomach like my girlfriend?” he would tease. I would just roll my eyes at him and suck in my stomach.

One year, we had gotten a video camera for Christmas. Kent, another friend of my husband’s was in town and the three of them started clowning around for the camera. We ended up with an impromptu “Don’t Do Drugs” commercial, with Tod providing the hilarious laughs.

As the years sailed by, we shared weddings and new additions to our families. Tod lived in St. Louis and we occasionally spent time together whenever they would travel to Michigan and Illinois to see his family.

Dreams full of promises
Hopes for the future
I’ve had many

Dreams I can’t remember now
Hopes that I’ve forgotten
Faded memories

Then one day, we received a message from Cathy, his wife. “Tod has cancer. He only has a couple of months to live.”

Tod had felt a lump in his neck early that summer. He was diagnosed with cancer in December of 2001. So early in 2002, we started making plans to head down to St. Louis to spend some time with Tod. His sister flew in from California and a bunch of us drove down. It was a magical weekend of memories and enjoying the time together. We played poker and reminisced about good times. Around midnight, we stood around looking outside. The snow had fallen and the moon was out. The trees glistened and everything had a surreal glow.

(From left to right: Tod’s sister, Kristy, Mark, Joe, Mike, Ron and Tod)

Still I love to see the sun go down
And the world go around
I love to see the morning as it steals across the sky
I love to remember
And I love to wonder why

The next morning, we all went for breakfast at the local Denny’s with a couple of St. Louis locals. We laughed, we chatted and connected. Little did we know that time was truly running out.

The next day, Tod went into the hospital. He received some terrible news.

He had just a month left.

We had talked about going to Disney World together, but we dashed those plans. Tod was too sick. Joe and I drove down for a final day with Tod at the end of February. It was a heartbreaking visit. On March 4, 2002 Tod passed away, just a few days shy of his birthday. His daughter Emily was three and his son Jason was just a few months old.

Today, Cathy, Emily and Jason are doing well and still living in St. Louis.

Tod Morris Memorial

(The quoted song is “Around and Around” by John Denver. The above picture was taken by one of Tod’s friends. Tod loved to be on the water and he loved to fish.)

I’m sure Bob Nardelli is laughing all the way to the bank. The Home Depot CEO was given the boot after six years of keeping Home Depot stores in their messy state. As a nice going-away present, the board gave Nardelli some parting money to the tune of 210 million bucks.

Why should I care?

Last year, Home Depot took up a large chunk of my time. A simple refund in the form of a store credit turned into weeks of store visits, which lead to this Epinion: No More Home Depot for Us! The final straw was a rude encounter with a manager who refused to give us the sale price on a product that was deceptively advertised as being on sale.

In the area where I live, Home Depot was the nearest home improvement store for several years. It was the default store that we ran to when we needed supplies to finish our basement. We learned to navigate the messy aisles in the same way we navigated around our home: by stepping over piles and squeezing around aisle displays to reach products.

As a result of our weeks of returning to the store to haggle for our refund, we were able to chat with employees and learned that the morale among employees was low. They pointed fingers at the CEO, who apparently came in cracking a whip and expecting performance with low reward. Someone forgot to tell Nardelli that the real problem is customer service and the inability to find a product in the store. Make your customers happy and they’ll keep returning.

Nardelli’s dismissal has come too late for our family.

We now shop at Lowes and Menards.

Good gosh, today is January 2nd. Already.

This year is flying by too fast.

On Sunday night, we had a couple of friends over to ring in the new year. It was one of those last minute affairs, with an email sent out a few days before. With the lack of babysitters, the logical solution was to just get together and bring all the kids. Everyone brought something to share and there was plenty of food to go around.

Food and friends, you can’t beat that combination.

As I was running around tossing buffalo wings into the oven and the other gals were filling up bowls and platters, I briefly thought back through the years to another New Year’s Eve party that I attended in high school. Everyone at this 1981 party had normal hearing. Most of the people there were from my swim team, including a guy that I absolutely adored. I was relatively comfortable with them, but the noisy environment and fast-flowing conversations meant that I couldn’t follow conversations. So I found myself social bluffing my way through conversations. Of course, with all the under-aged drinking going on, it was easy for everyone to simply assume that I had too much to drink and was just spacing out instead of talking. I felt like the “real” me was hidden because I wasn’t able to speak my mind or contribute to the group conversations.

I left that party wishing I had normal hearing.

Fast forward to Sunday’s party. Despite the shrieking of a dozen kids, the blaring of the tv and some loud voices, I’m able to have a conversation with everyone there. Everyone’s deaf, hard of hearing or a child of deaf/hard of hearing adults. We’re a mish-mash of communication modes, but everyone signs. There’s a comfort I can’t explain, but it must be the same ease that people with normal hearing have when they gather in groups as well; they’re not straining to “hear” or follow conversation. They’re not limiting their involvement in group conversation because of a physical inability to converse.

So on Sunday, I was able to argue the merits of investing in retail stock, discuss new recipes and debate the future without missing a word or straining to understand a conversation. Quite a long way from the high school party where I left feeling like a large chunk of my life was missing.

So here’s to 2007. If anyone reading this is feeling the same way that I did back in 1981– here’s to some new friendships and hoping that you will find a group of friends to connect with that will have you saying, “Ah, life is good.”

Happy Holidays to everyone!

We just returned from Michigan and Oak Forest, spending time with both sides of the family. I’m looking forward to having the kids at home for the next two weeks. The house is filled with the usual after-Christmas chaos, half of the stuff here and the other half there and one happy chew-anything dog who is getting into everything. The kids are already clamoring for batteries, screwdrivers and scissors and it’s only eight a.m.

I’m crawling back into bed instead.