Deaf/Mute

I talked to my sponsor earlier today and she says she thinks it’s time I start on step 4, making a list of all of my moral and financial wrongs. I wanted to tell her, “Wait, I’m not even sure I’ve made it past step 2 yet. I’m still not entirely convinced that I can’t just fix this all myself.”

But she’s right. There’s a lot of crud to excavate. Thinking through all of the hurts I’ve inflicted over the many years is not fun. I was just reminded of one as stood out on the back deck of the house where I am dog-sitting.

The next door neighbors are deaf, and, from what I can tell, they appear to be having a game night or watching baseball or something, as every few minutes a chorus of guttural cheers will erupt into the night. It’s quite jovial, and if I didn’t already know they were deaf, I’d probably just think it was a regional dialect.

But I do know they are deaf, and so I can hear that their shouts and whoops are softer around the edges than mine or my friends’ might be.

One of my best friends growing up had an uncle who was deaf and mute, Stevie. He may have also had developmental issues but, to be honest, in my child’s mind people who were deaf and/or mute were the same as those who were developmentally disabled so I couldn’t accurately tell you the severity of disabilities. To us, as kids, he just showed up one day and moved into the spare room, but I’m sure details were worked out beforehand that we were not a part of.

Stevie was probably 35 or 40 and communicated with variations on a sound that, phonetically, was something like, “yung.”

One yung usually meant “hello” or similar.

Two yungs usually indicated he wanted something - dinner perhaps.

Multiple yungs – “Yung, yung, yung, yung, yung, yung, yung, YUNG!!!!” – meant us jack-ass kids were teasing him or worse and generally translated to, “Get the fuck away from me you demon children,” because that’s what we were.

We were horrible to Stevie, running into his room to scare him, taunting him, pranking him in all of the ineffectual ways that kids do, stealing his money, hiding his remote controls, making fun of him when he dressed up as Batman for Halloween. On second thought, I think he might have had some developmental issues.

Which only adds to my regret. I am forever sorry for this behavior. As an adult, I would never dream of acting this way to anyone who so much as had a speech impediment. I wasn’t raised to behave that way. If I saw children – strangers’ children whom I didn’t even know – behaving this way to someone of any ability level, I would intervene. I wouldn’t stand for it.

But, as a kid who really was old enough to know better, not only did I stand for it, I usually fell down laughing from horrid glee because of it. That makes me sick and sad and sorry. Stevie, for what little it is worth, you are near the top of my financial and moral wrongs list.