"Don't Cry" Part I

-5- I'm Deaf?

Part 1

Things were going good at Zion, my Lutheran private school. At the end of the year I had straight A's. I knew I was going to miss all my friends, I wasn't going to be there next year: McKenzie, Scarlet, Alana, Brooke, Stephanie, and my unofficial boyfriend Jonathan. But leaving my friends wasn't going to disappoint me for long, for I knew that God always had already had my path paved filled with bright, new people. I made sure I hugged them all goodbye.

I had to switch from Zion Lutheran School to Quest Academy for 2nd grade. Life was pretty good there. Downgraded from a 500 acre private church school to a school on the road. The building was actually a giant unfold-able trailer, that meant no gym. Pretty embarrassing for the daughter of a pre-Olmpic Soccer super-star. I was popular, but a good-girl at the same time. All the boys in my class liked me, but I didn't really care.

Over the summer, my parents ( as in my grandparents and my mum ) started noticing how I couldn't hear very well. Daddad tapped onto the glass table with his knuckles before calling my name. Mum and Noey were watching us from behind the kitchen counter.

I turned around. It was Daddad, I had not heard the tap on the kitchen table.

"Did you hear that? He asked.

"Umm...hear what?".

"This." He tapped on the table again.

I thought for a moment. Its complicated. I can 'see' the sound...but the volume was so low and the frequencies were so blurry. If I was blind I probably wouldn't be able to notice it. "No."

"Really? Or are you just trying to get attention?"

"No Daddad, it is just... hmm... umm...faint?" I answered, figjiting with my fingers.

He tapped onto the black kitchen table again even louder this time. "Now?"

I swear, it sounded exactly the same as someone tapping on wood, playing the piano, or a firetruck siren. Everything does. Everything sounded exactly the same.

"Well, ya." They all looked at me, I wondered why.

Ah, I didn't really care. I am a normal girl, with a normal life, it would be so weird to have people call me deaf right? Besides, I can hear fine! Everyone else can hear just like me, right? I thought.

Eventually, my mum took me to get my hearing tested and signed up for hearing aids at Children's Hospital.

After the hearing and lip-reading test, they had the results. They found I was missing more 3/4 of my hearing. I had an unbelievably high lip-reading score, this made it evident that I lost my hearing due to a fever and kidney infections I had when I was 3.

I was really deaf to high frequencies. The sad thing is, all the vowels are high except for O and some forms of A. I could barely understand the darn letters! No wonder I had always thought that S and Ls were vowels.

I was the 3rd best lip-reader in Colorado without training and I was only 7, the 12th best in the nation. All the other good lip-leaders were adults apparently. For this reason, they were more into interviewing me than fixing my hearing.

This chapter is not yet done! I will eventually put in what it is like to finnally hear people, but I am too lazy, the next parts are too interesting!