I’ve just been for a lovely evening out - a friend from out of town invited us out for a meal with him and we chose a favourite simple and friendly Italian restaurant in the middle of the city. All good - great food, nice wine, friendly company.
But…dammit I wanted to bang my head on the table in frustration - several times. We often go into this place, they know I’m deaf, and they always try to put us in a very pleasant “quiet” corner. The problem is it’s a restaurant - so “quiet” is strictly a relative term. It sounded like pandemonium to me. Did I hear one word in ten? Possibly. Though in terms of putting together amusing anecdotes, one word in ten isn’t enough to get the thread, let alone the punchline. So I tried turning my aids off, but that didn’t work because of the way we were sitting…turned them on again. Plenty of sound but hardly any more words, apart from the feeling, bizarrely, that I could hear the occasional word from another table altogether.
This could make me sociopathic, but I refuse to let it do that. The frustration tonight was partly my own fault - I should have taken a notebook but I forgot. And despite not hearing much, it was still a lovely evening. It was great to spend time with our friend, we were all happy, but I know I was missing a lot and that nagged away occasionally.
I’m used to that, of course. So this isn’t a rant - just a reflection really - and it certainly won’t stop me enjoying eating out with friends, which is something I enjoy a lot, even though I know I’d hear far more of what they had to say if we were sitting round the dining table at home.
August 19th, 2005 at 8:54 am
Ugh, I feel your frustration! Lately, whenever a family member or friend comes to visit me - instead of eating at a restaurant - we order carry-out and enjoy it in the quietness of my dining room. People have commented that it’s so much more relaxing and fun to try that approach, and they get the added benefit of me actually being able to be a part of the conversation.
Personally, I think ALL restaurants should be required to have a separate soundproof room reserved for deaf people only (a booth in a corner just doesn’t cut it!!!) - just like they all have to implement handicap parking spaces. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Or maybe just a booth enclosed with glass, so you’re still enjoying the scene?
My frustration lately with restaurants is when I’m on a date and trying to make a good impression. It’s SO embarrassing when I try so hard to study the menu to make sure I’m going to know exactly what meal options the waitress is going to rattle off rapid-fire at me while she chews on a pen and screws all chances of my ability to read her lips -
(soupsaladcoleslawwhatkindofdressinganythingtodrink?)
Let me tell you, my face positively BLUSHES when I fail to comprehend the words coming out the waitress’s mouth, and I have to glance helplessly at my date - hoping he’ll pick up the slack and help me out. After that comes the look of pity and muted silence. That is NOT an enjoyable date to me!
What’s a girl to do? Order a double gin&tonic and flash that fake smile.
August 19th, 2005 at 11:57 am
Restaurants are immediate death to the hearing aid user’s ability to partake in conversation.
Question- Do you sit with your back to the wall, or your back to the room? I’m told that the ideal seating for a person who is deaf, is to have your back in a corner if at all possible. Does it work? Hah! No.
I do the same hearing aids in, hearing aids out dance, to no avail. Sometimes I take out one hearing aid (my left one) in the hopes that the quiet high-pitches that I can hear, and that my hearing aids cut out, will somehow make it through the hullabaloo to my ears.
I think that the worst part is when I go with a hearing person who just doesn’t understand my inability to lipread/hear in these conversations, and makes some asinine comment about “you’re quiet today”. Yeah, you bet your britches I’m quiet. You’d be quiet too, if you understood maybe one word out of every 20. Spacey, too. I often find myself staring at the table or my food, or out a window. Trying to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes because they might talk to me and revitalize that game of say-something, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, give up in embarassment.
August 19th, 2005 at 11:59 am
hehe I often find myself saying “What do you recommend?” followed up by “that sounds great!” It’s introduced me to some salad dressings that I hope to never try again–if only I knew what they were called so that I could avoid them. :p
Chicken feet and frog’s legs, served with octopus dressing? Sign me up! Sounds great! Uh. At least until it’s on my plate and I see what I just agreed to.
August 19th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Hehe - this is very familiar territory and I don’t usually ask for recommendations unless they are written down somewhere where I can read them too. The “and for today’s special we also have mmrghhddrmmbgghttooddmmeennne” bit does tend to produce the snails and octopus options
August 19th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
First the question - how do I sit. Well, this “quiet corner” has a chair on the end of the table, so I can at least attempt to see the other people along the sides of it. That’s good. What is not good is that this chair means that I am sitting with my back to the main restaurant, and much din ensues. But as you say, the idea that sitting in a corner against a wall is actually no more use despite appearing to be a good idea (except that sound reflects off walls…so it’s sometimes actually worse).
I sometimes react slightly differently to the non-communication problem. I know I’m not going to hear anything they say, so I attempt to do a lot of talking myself (the garrulous-deafie defence mechanism). This was certainly the case last night, especially as our friend who was buying dinner last night is not one of the most deaf-aware of people. But social niceties dictate that I had to stop sometime and the inevitable happened: inaudiblestoryaboutIdon’tknowwhatbecauseitwasimpossible tohear expect for the last bit which registered with crystal clarity: “So what do you think of that?” Umm, I wonder if you’d mind saying all that one more time…
August 19th, 2005 at 1:46 pm
I hardly go out to restaurants with friends and go solo on my own…makes it easier for me to avoid the hassles of group conversations and miss out what’s being said, etc. And if the waitress asks me what I want..next time I’ll remember to ask for her phone number or something like that.
August 19th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
Screw it - we ought to boycott the whole restaurant biz!
…well, maybe not - I’m a total sushi/mexican/italian/thai lover.
I remember reading this news article about a restaurant that has a particularly strange gimmick - you had to eat in pitch black darkness. Apparently, not SEEING the food allowed your senses of taste and smell to increase substantially (duh). All the waitstaff people wear little beeping devices to alert each other of their whereabouts in the dark (that would annoy the bejesus outta me - “hey, is that you feedbackin’ or me?”).
Okay. With that in mind - how about a restaurant where you’re forced to eat in pitch black silence? Well? Of course it would never happen! If people were forced to sit there, unable to converse verbally, the boredom would literally drive them up the wall! Any hearing person will admit that. But what none of them realizes is that… that’s how OUR restaurant experiences are each and every time
Getting fired up here, guys. Decompress decompress.
Thank god it’s Friday.
August 19th, 2005 at 3:15 pm
Yeah..and that means…I’m going out drinking tonight to my hangout and hide away from the society of ignoramace.
August 19th, 2005 at 3:37 pm
Julie - there’s certainly a restaurant in Paris which has a completely dark interior because all the staff are blind - and in some ways it’s rather a cool idea I think. I’d love a quiet restaurant that was also good. The trouble is the quiet ones are usually empty for a reason.
Oh and I didn’t even mention when there’s music playing (the place we went to doesn’t ever do that - another reason I like it).
August 19th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
hehe Sometimes I do that. I remember the first time I met a friend of mine, from Texas. He’s not of the same… *ahem* political affiliation as me.
I couldn’t understand a word that he said because he had a beard. So I just started ranting and raving.
About politics.
How dumb. My fiance elbowed me and hissed “What the hell are you doing?”
I went home later and kicked myself in the butt, and emailed off an apology.
I’m wary about doing the “talk too much” thing, now.
August 19th, 2005 at 8:00 pm
VERY good point there, Julie. About “Silent dining”–there’s actually a “Silent Dinner” thing–but it’s all about using ASL. Bah.
Every hearing person should be forced to sit through a meal of absolute silence.
Not that it would make them understand any more. Because part of the “experience” is not understanding the stuff that’s _obviously_ going on around you.
*sigh*
August 19th, 2005 at 8:01 pm
At least the music gives me something to listen to and entertain me.
August 19th, 2005 at 8:23 pm
I’m wary about it too - I feel myself lapsing into talk-constantly-mode and wonder what on earth the others must be thinking, but at least they can hear me
I blush to think about some of the rants I’ve launched on, but people seem to be decently forgiving about it.
I tend to do that with friends I know - or new friends I feel comfortable with. Otherwise I tend to go for the unusually-quiet version of me and try not to nod in a way that invites questions about something I haven’t understood in the first place.
The lovely exception to all this is going out with deaf friends - suddenly everything feels easier, less self-conscious, and somehow communication involves a lot less sense of struggle, just because it’s shared.
August 20th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
ignoramus..I meant…
but still..boycott’s sound like a great idea..
unless you want to make signs that say “I’m deaf and could you politely and silently point to the suggested food selection for our excellent dining experience? Thank you.”.
Then again…a good violent solution would do..(evil grin)
August 20th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
News at six: A deaf man in Ohio violently attacked a waitress after she insisted on mumbling the names of the salad dressing at a pace that can best be described as “rapid fire”.
May 18th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
phentermine…
winnings.dramatists courters Effie starving phentermine http://phenterminehclhere.blogspot.com/ …