old friends
I got some positive reinforcement a couple of weeks back when I met up with two friends from grade school -- one of whom I'd seen last year, but for the other, it had been just short of 32 years. I moved away from this town after the fifth grade, and the other two had left after the sixth. In the case of the 32-year absence, that would have been Michael, who was born, as he puts it, "profoundly deaf" as a result of his mother having rubella while he was in utero. He had hearing aids in both ears, sometimes with a cord that led to a receiver that was Velcro'd to his belt. Michael had lived a few towns away from ours, but for some reason my grade school had a program for what they used to call the hearing-impaired. For a couple of hours every day, the deaf kids would be in a classroom with each other, but the rest of the day, they were immersed in the "regular" classes. As a result, they were assimilated with their peers. Michael was in our math classes, our gym classes. We had recess and played kickball. We horsed around and endured bullies. Nobody picked on Michael because he was deaf; he got the same treatment from the same jerks as the nerds, the geeks, the kids with glasses and the kids who lisped. He went to all our birthday parties, and when it was his birthday, we carpooled over to his town for his party. He was one of us.
Perhaps because of his immersion, Michael doesn't use ASL, but can lip-read from across the room. Before our reunion, I could not remember how I used to communicate with him, but once he got off the train and said hello, I was brought right back to our youth. The three of us kept saying how great it was to get together, and enjoyed reminding each other of the various minutiae that we happened to recall from those days. And of course, each anecdote would lead to another. Michael reminded us how our second grade teacher read to us and encouraged writing; we both could say that we owed a lot to her.
It was also interesting, while looking over class photos, to hear his perspectives on some of the kids. Certain ones were remembered as nice guys or troublemakers or oddballs or bullies, but what kept coming through was the understated compassion he had for people who were "different". It's a perspective that I've missed over the years, and hopefully with improved contact I can get some of that back. When we were in the first and second grade, things were certainly a little simpler. Towards the fifth and sixth grades, we'd already started to become tainted by other influences. I had to go to a new school as a geek with a funny name, a lisp and a thin skin, but Michael had to go to a new school with a more tangible handicap that couldn't be as easily overcome.
This is not to say I pitied him in the least; again, he was one of us, and his deafness was just another quirk that was always there. He graduated from Brown, and got his MBA. He's worked for a variety of prestigious companies, and he just happens to be passionate about improving accessibility in technology. (When we were exchanging info for our get-together, two of us said, "Call me at this number"; Michael said, "Text me at this number".) He's also been out of work for a while, thanks not to any disability but to the economy. While he doesn't share the same interest in records as I do -- music not being a large part of his daily routine -- he still said he enjoyed reading my blog entries, just because he could perceive the happiness I got from them.
It was a wonderful evening, spent at the same pizza joint where we'd had many of those birthday parties in the '70s. It would have been nicer if the waiter hadn't "misplaced" a $20 bill we'd left as part of our tab, but we got a group photo out of it, and its subsequent posting on Facebook got jealous demands from some of our old cronies who demanded to be a part of the next get-together.
So I may not have a full-time job, but no man is a failure who has friends. That said, I still need a job.
Perhaps because of his immersion, Michael doesn't use ASL, but can lip-read from across the room. Before our reunion, I could not remember how I used to communicate with him, but once he got off the train and said hello, I was brought right back to our youth. The three of us kept saying how great it was to get together, and enjoyed reminding each other of the various minutiae that we happened to recall from those days. And of course, each anecdote would lead to another. Michael reminded us how our second grade teacher read to us and encouraged writing; we both could say that we owed a lot to her.
It was also interesting, while looking over class photos, to hear his perspectives on some of the kids. Certain ones were remembered as nice guys or troublemakers or oddballs or bullies, but what kept coming through was the understated compassion he had for people who were "different". It's a perspective that I've missed over the years, and hopefully with improved contact I can get some of that back. When we were in the first and second grade, things were certainly a little simpler. Towards the fifth and sixth grades, we'd already started to become tainted by other influences. I had to go to a new school as a geek with a funny name, a lisp and a thin skin, but Michael had to go to a new school with a more tangible handicap that couldn't be as easily overcome.
This is not to say I pitied him in the least; again, he was one of us, and his deafness was just another quirk that was always there. He graduated from Brown, and got his MBA. He's worked for a variety of prestigious companies, and he just happens to be passionate about improving accessibility in technology. (When we were exchanging info for our get-together, two of us said, "Call me at this number"; Michael said, "Text me at this number".) He's also been out of work for a while, thanks not to any disability but to the economy. While he doesn't share the same interest in records as I do -- music not being a large part of his daily routine -- he still said he enjoyed reading my blog entries, just because he could perceive the happiness I got from them.
It was a wonderful evening, spent at the same pizza joint where we'd had many of those birthday parties in the '70s. It would have been nicer if the waiter hadn't "misplaced" a $20 bill we'd left as part of our tab, but we got a group photo out of it, and its subsequent posting on Facebook got jealous demands from some of our old cronies who demanded to be a part of the next get-together.
So I may not have a full-time job, but no man is a failure who has friends. That said, I still need a job.