Whispery voices. Lips half-glued together as they make words. Speed-talkers. Speech manglers!
It’s the classic struggle for the person with hearing loss: talking with someone who has ‘poor’ articulation. Even people with typical hearing can strain to understand when speech isn’t clear. For us, well-articulated speech is challenging enough to understand, let alone words with dropped consonants, too much breath and not enough volume. But if the conversation is important enough, we do what we can to bridge the communication gap. Pardon me? Could you speak up, or slow down, or move your lips a little more? (Truth? I have never asked someone to do the last one, alhtough I think it all the time.)
Most people deliver what we need, when asked. But not everyone is able to; it’s difficult to sustain what, to them, is an unnatural manner of speaking. Soft speakers feel like they’re yelling and fast talkers can grind to a halt if they’re asked to slow down too much.. But most people at least try, although not always successfully. Then, some people with hearing loss get annoyed, even angry, which is usually a cover for their frustration with not only the speaker, but their own hearing loss. Other times, we may retreat into bluffing because it just takes too much energy to converse.
And in today’s world, the wearing of masks has taken poor communication to a stratospheric new level.
But we have to keep trying. We must tell people over and over again that we need them to adjust, even just for a few minutes, the way that they speak because we are hearing as hard as we can.
A few years ago, I wrote this ‘poem’ after a frustrating coffee date with a friend.
If I Could Move Your Lips
If I could move your lips for you, I would.
We’ve been friends forever and I can read your emotions, easily.
But reading your words is tough because your lips don’t move,
Not much.
Sometimes friendships have not flourished
Under the strain of communication, but
You are my friend – I want to keep talking with you forever.
And today, meeting in Starbucks, I’m in trouble
As I watch, listen and interpret your lips,
Shaping words for me to see and making sounds for me to hear.
Your lips are smiling – but your eyes are not.
Your fingers drum the café tabletop,
Competing with the noise of a hundred coffee cups.
We could talk in a quiet, well-lit place,
But we love the atmosphere here,
And the lower lighting flatters our age.
So, whose fault is it – yours, mine or ours –
When for the ten thousandth time
I must ask you to repeat yourself.
I sense your invisible eye-rolling and
Immediately, I’m both apologetic and resentful
And I want to shout:
OK, I’m sorry to ask you to repeat – again,
But maybe if you moved your damn lips!?
I do everything I can to make it easier,
This café isn’t that loud, or that dark.
We’re sitting close and I’m wired for sound.
The only thing I can’t control is the way you move your lips.
I hate to say it, but you missed the “giving good lip” gene.
You’re just not good at it.
Sometimes I want to reach over and grab a lip in each hand and move them,
So that you can feel how the words should come out.
But I don’t say this, because it’s difficult to change how we speak, and I know you try.
We’ve been friends forever, and I love you.
But if I could move your lips for you, I would:
Keep them pointed in my direction
Move them apart from each other
Slow them down
Free them from food and fingers
Match their expression with your eyes
If I could move your lips for you, I would.
But I can’t.
So please tell me again, my friend
What you just said.
