BY GARY JOHNSON
Reprinted from Loose Change (TCBMag.com)

“Hear the birds? Sometimes I try to imagine what it’s like to be deaf and not hear the birds. It’s actually not that bad.”—Larry David

The art of listening, it’s Oprah-esque. Can’t you see her talking to soul man Gary Zukav about it on Sunday morning, i.e., listening as a sacred, overt act of compassion? Psychologists refer to it as making room for another. Be. The. Silence. Did you know that people only internalize 25 to 50 percent of what they hear? We really aren’t very good listeners. But the horse I rode in on today is not about listening.

My name is Gary, and I’m deaf as a wooden post.

Scene: High school reunion a few years back. I was told my old flame and friends were at a noisy bar. We met there a little before our class headed to the obligatory reception of cheap wine, bland food, and dancing to songs we used to make out to on the basement couch. I saw her from across the smoky, neon-lit room. We moved slowly toward one another, eyes locked, smiles piercing the tension. We embraced. She placed her hands on my midriff. I lost my breath, mostly because I was desperate to flatten the handlebars of fat on my waistline by sucking in everything I could muster. We stood. Alone. In the crowded barroom. Cue the ceiling kaleidoscope. She stood up on her tippy-toes, putting her mouth close to my ear. For a split second, the world stopped turning. She declared breathlessly . . . “I buried you.”

Cut! Stop filming. Did I hear that correctly?

“What?” I asked. “I buried you,” she repeated.

Damn, she said it again! Immediately I transported to that place where we who are hard of hearing go when in doubt about what was said: cognitive dissonance—the language dysfunction junction. Logic would have suggested there was something to her surprising metaphor, “buried,” though her high school GPA suggested she was not prone to using figurative language. On the other hand, I had buried her years ago, deep in my psychological cemetery.

Ah, what the hell, I’ll go with “buried” for $100, Alex.

I looked in her eyes and replied tentatively yet gamely, “I buried you too,” believing we were closing the book on a puppy love that ended ragged. Long story short: The rotary phone rang at my house and she informed me that after intense pressure from her domineering mother (my words, not hers) she was marrying a previous boyfriend, an older guy with guns for arms and impressive teeth who played safety for a powerhouse football team in the Mountain West conference. Admittedly, not an irrational choice for her and for me the best possible outcome, given the cute girl I ultimately hoodwinked into becoming my wife.

“Buried?” she blurted. “ I MARRIED you!” Pouring her heart out, she was explaining she had left the homecoming king and ended up marrying a guy just like me. Hey, Irving, whack me upside the head with a rolled-up newspaper. My handicap had me playing gravedigger to an otherwise tender act of reconciliation.

It started in the womb. My ENT tells me I have teeny, weeny ear canals, which when not loaded with ear wax, do little to allow sound to get through to my cochlea and its sound-horny nerve endings. Worse, my father was dealt a lousy genetic hand for hearing. He slathered icing on that cake by becoming a sheet metal mechanic, an occupation closely akin to hanging out on an airport runway listening to planes take off all day. He developed tinnitus, so his head rang like a broken radio tube 24/7. I followed suit, helped along by rock and roll, playing hundreds of nights in small night clubs standing in front of huge amplifiers. Worse, those were times when it was de rigueur to spend most of one’s waking hours with cranked-up headphones on, grooving to Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and Led Zeppelin. Dumb.

Hearing and listening are kissin’ cousins, unless of course you’re three-quarters deaf. Then hearing becomes a stream of crapshoots, living in whatever reality it chooses to create. You become a walking malapropism. If ears were the United Nations, Norm Crosby would be my translator. “Married” becomes “buried.” “Pass the butter” becomes “How’s your brother?”

Aside from those pesky bunions he’s doing great. Time to see someone about some hearing aids.

Editor’s Note: Gary Johnson is President of MSP Communications in Minneapolis, MN and authors the blog Loose Change for TCBmag.com.