“Chris, eventually you will know everything”: How Hearing Loss Led to An Inquisitive Mind Christopher Burton I am Christopher Burton, and I have been accused of trying to know everything. The person who accused me goes by the name of Staffas Brossard. Of course Staffas is right. He’s not 40 years older than me for nothing. But his statement makes me consider the factors that shaped me to be the way that I am. His statements make me search for an answer by flipping through the layers of my brain and old documents that my grandmother keeps stored away. Since I have no recollection of my very early years, I rely on documents to start from the beginning. I was born a healthy baby 15 minutes before my sister, Christina. At 18 months I contracted spinal meningitis, and because of fluid on the brain had permanent nerve damage to some of the hearing cells resulting in partial hearing loss in both ears. I found some papers some three years after the disease that say that I was a child given to gesturing and pointing instead of using language to get what I wanted. I remember this behavior of mine. One summer day on the stairwell landing outside of our project apartment, I asked my mother for a “quarter” to get a frozen cup. She thought I wanted “water,” and then I proceeded to gesticulation. I mimed drinking a cup of water and then shook my head, no. Then, I pointed to my hand. She understood. Given that hot summer day and my bad pronunciation, I could have plausibly meant “quarter” or “water.” The hearing loss, experts in speech pathology tell me, was the reason that I was misunderstood and thus resorted to gestures. I was kept back my pre-kindergarten year partly because of this problem. Which means that my sister was a year ahead of me for most of my school career. Which means that even with an older brother and a twin sister around, I was verbally and socially disconnected from them. We lived in separate social-academic worlds and had three sets of friends with little overlap. Though we lived together, I didn’t talk to them much, because when I got excited, words came pouring out that always had to be repeated. Hearing loss made me more prone to inarticulate gesturing, but maybe it also made me more prone to gathering data through channels outside of the verbal realm. I remember also, and this somewhat disturbs me, that at my mother’s funeral I did not cry. Was I, a six-year-old, so afraid of not being understood verbally that I became verbally silent? Was I so conditioned from my experiences that I could not openly express the emotion in me for the woman whom I knew as my “benevolent” mother? In fact, now, much later in life, I have found letters that my mother wrote by my bedside when I was 18 months old, sick in the hospital from a meningitis infection. And, boy did those commentaries from my bedside tug at my heart. And also they made me feel guilty to have shed no public tears at the funeral (though, I indeed cried hard later that day all those years back). Moving on through the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades, virtually all the teacher evaluations
that were written about me were the same: well behaved (I interpret as being quiet), good work habits (mostly the influence of my grandmother), and a pleasure to have in class (once again is a quiet and docile student). What I think these teachers failed to see is that I had no real “friends” in their classes. I kept to myself, because the kids made fun of the way I talked and my big ears and feet. And for some reason during recess the other kids rarely picked me on their teams. Even though I am sure I was better than some of the people chosen, I usually was left on the fence. At recess I generally stuck to myself, walking around the field watching everyone play. And I would think about how silly was the game “Running Man,” a sort of modified “It” game in which you ran in a group from one end of the yard to the other, and about the way the “old” section of the school looked way better than the “new” section of the school and etcetera. Then came the 5th grade and my first male teacher, Mr. Duplessis. He’s the one who got me hooked into reading. Mr. Duplessis was a tall African-American man. At Oretha Castle Haley, there was a “cool down period” after recess. Most teachers didn’t do anything with this period, but Mr. Duplessis would read to us. I always stayed awake for the readings while a few of my classmates slept. Mr. Duplessis’s voice was captivating and made the story come alive. The book title was something about Willie and Freedom or something. I don’t really recall, but I still remember the story after all these years. Mr. Duplessis inspired me to read, a task that can be seen as exclusively non-verbal. For the couple of years leading up to my graduation from Frederick A. Douglass High School, I read extensively. Class for the most part was boring and filled with redundancies, and I found much time during class to do reading. Teachers added to the teacher evaluation “effective use of free time.” Pssh, they can call it whatever they want to call it. I would read everything from social studies books to gaming magazines, from historical fiction to science fiction. I was reading so much that I had much insight into and a different level of understanding of many of the teachers’ lessons (which usually made the lesson make a whole lot more sense in relation to my life). In the 8th grade I was finally released from speech therapy classes that I had been attending since pre-kindergarten. I still was a quiet student, but I was becoming more confident in my ability to be understood verbally. Now we move to me of the Present. This Christopher Burton’s favorite word is “interesting.” I can’t help it. Because of substantial readings and early life experiences, I have this tilt to the analytical. I am loud at times as I have really broken away from my insecurities about my speech barrier and have made many friends. However, there is a negative effect to me having confidence in speaking. Speech therapy focuses on proper enunciation of letters and words; consequently, I have been accused by many blacks, whites, and otherwise that I am trying to be white. They can call me what they will, but there are certain circumstances that can’t be changed. I would pose this question though: Why would I want to “be” white in a world that is primarily composed of blacks, mahoganies, yellows, purples, and other non-whites who generally dislike the Western European Nations and the U.S? Can they answer me that one before they approach me again?