I won't take too long with this post, because I have another daily project awaiting me - that of doing research for my very own television concept. The research stage is fantabulous. I have been diving into Buffy Season Six, and I am enjoying every single minute of it. The episode "Once More With Feeling" was pure genius. I like it even a little more than I like "Hush." Ah, Buffy.
That said, I guess I should jump right in and talk about what I had planned to talk about - my "disability."
I have mild hearing loss affecting both my ears. To aid me with my hearing, I have to wear in-the-ear (ITE) hearing aids. The hearing loss isn't that severe or debilitating. I have trouble with high pitches (think: the first few notes of a standard Nokia alarm), and I could use help with the clarity of speech or volume. But aside from that, I am fine. I can function without the hearing aids, and I will not start panicking if their batteries run out when I don't expect it. That said, I do try to wear the aids as much as possible, because they're supposed to stimulate auditory nerves that would not otherwise be stimulated, with the end result being a possible beterment of my hearing capabilities.
To add to this mild hearing loss, I also have a very prominent tendency of blocking out reality and spacing out - especially when I am sleepy or thinking about something else. The first time I noticed this tendency was back in Grade School. I was working on a sewing project during that sewing class, and I remember having to ask Ms. Zafra about what stitch I needed to be doing. But in my head, I was singing "the more we get together, together, together, together; the more we get together, the happier are we." I walked up to her, and instead of asking her to demonstrate the basket stitch, as I had intended to, I ended up asking her, "the more the merrier, right?"
This has happened several times since then. In the Oxford semi-finals, for example, the other team gave me a point of information, and I answered yes (with feelings too) when I should have said no because I thought he had phrased the question differently. While I was very much in the moment then, I was also thinking of how I was going to phrase my next argument in the most convincing way. Here, in the law school, when my friend and I were working on outlines for our final exam, I misinterpreted an encounter that my friend had with this random guy. I made up a story in my head to explain their conversation. In this case, when she told me about the story, my mind was still on the outline I was working on.
The combination of the mild hearing loss and my daydreaming tendencies can lead to potentially disastrous results. There's nothing I can do about the hearing loss, but there is something I can do about the daydreaming tendencies. But then again, there's nothing I can do about those tendencies too, because those are a function of who I am - when I concentrate on something, I focus to the exclusion of everything else, and when I am sleepy, then my brain just shuts down, and I then become ill-equipped for meaningful social interaction.
I guess I should just focus more and be in the moment more. Or if I can't do that, I should tell my friends about my tendencies to save them from insult.
Speaking of my hearing loss, I remember an incident when two people got annoyed with me when I kept asking them to repeat themselves. Instead of answering me properly, therefore, they got back to me with sarcastic responses that I myself got annoyed at. I wasn't trying to be stupid - I just couldn't hear or, more accurately, understand what they were saying. One was mumbling very, very softly. Also, we were walking and not facing each other, so I couldn't figure out what was being said by looking at the lip movement. Ah, well. I thought about making a big deal about this, but I threw that idea away. My style is to combat sarcasm with even more sarcasm (I am the queen of sarcasm.), and match every witty statement with one even wittier, and I'm not going to change that just because I can't do it in a particular context.
That's enough writing for tonight. Have other thoughts, but will dump them quickly in the journal that is for my eyes only. And then it's back to my research work for the evening.
P.S. I am ROFL at the title I picked for this post.
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