Somewhat Silent

The funny thing about my deafness is how it profoundly shaped my social life in terms of who I befriended: namely males.

It all began in 1st grade, my first all-girl slumber party. The girls were playing a game where you had to whisper a story in each others ears and pass it down the line - this was my first realization that I cannot, for the life of me, hear whispers. Dumbstruck, I chose to sit on the sidelines, and would do so for many years.

As we all grew older, the gender-divide developed as girls tended to be more into chatting/gossiping, while boys stuck with more physical activities such as games/sports. Chatting was impossible for me, since I had to struggle so hard to hear female voices, so playing tagball on the playground with the boys was much more suiting to my enjoyment. If I ever talked to a boy, I had virtually no difficulty in understanding their somewhat deeper/slower voices.

Then as we all grew into adolescent years, I found that I could no longer just play along with the boys - they were starting to view me not as another buddy, but as a GIRL; the invites to play became rarer and rarer. God knows what was running thru their preteen minds. So, let’s just say I had to modify my behavior a little to keep the invites coming. I began flirting with them, taking cues from Seventeen magazine, and wearing make-up - deciding to weld my female status as a PR tool. This technique worked wonders - all day long, boys came knocking, asking if I wanted to walk to 7-11 for a slurpee or go for a bike ride to the park. As a result, I endured quite the reputation among the females - they began to eye me warily with jealousy - and the whispers, that I tried so hard to hear in the beginning, became about me.

In high school, I was still mainly running with the boys, but now the game was different. They expected a little more than just walking around the block together. I had no desire to ‘make-out’ or go to Homecoming, and consequently turned them all down. This mystified everyone, and so now it was the BOYS who whispered (’tease’, ‘lesbo’, you get the picture). Feeling isolated, I finally gave in to a boyfriend Junior year, simply to stave off the loneliness and rumors.

To this day, I’ve always had only one or two close female friends - and about 20 male friends (whose girlfriends/wives are highly suspicious with our strictly platonic friendships; they view me as the ‘Angelina’ even though I have never given them reason to worry). I’m happy with the friends I have, but wonder how many female friendships I might have cultivated over the years if it had not been for my deafness.