In the book Journey into Silence Jack Ashley says:
“Outside the family it was naturally easier for people to speak to others with normal hearing than to a deaf person, and all too often I watched a conversational pattern emerge and repeat itself. When I was talking with one person we would get along reasonably well, dpending on the attitude and intligence of the other person and my lip-reading ability. But if anyone joined us I would be gradually squeezed out of the converstion as the other two talked to each other. No unpleasantness was involved, but it was natural for them to react to each other’s comments rather than break the flow to explain things to me. In every situation I had to decide whether to stay out of the conversation and follow as best I could, or try to intervene and exert gentle pressure to keep it within my range of understanding. This means interrrupting, and asking one of them to repeat a sentence – something I did very sparingly.”
This reminds me of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie experience in restaurants which she talks about in a TED Talk:
Each time I walk into a Nigerian restaurant with a man, the waiter greets the man and ignores me. The waiters are products of a society that has taught them that men are more important than women. And I know that waiters don’t intend any harm. But it’s one thing to know intellectually and quite another to feel it emotionally. Each time they ignore me, I feel invisible. I feel upset. I want to tell them that I am just as human as the man, that I’m just as worthy of acknowledgment. These are little things, but sometimes it’s the little things that sting the most.
I had moments like this in a restaurant where the waiter would talk to whoever I am with. When some hearing people do not include me in the conversation sometimes it stings and other times it does not because in those moments I remember that it has nothing to do with me.
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