“Can you hear the music?”
The young woman knows how to talk to the deaf, and she did her best.
“What?”
“Are you not coming to hear the music?”
The words were carefully separated, and shouted close to the ear.
“Hey, who’s sick? I’m sure I don’t know.”
The old lady heard one sound clearly, and twisted it into the wrong word.
“Of course, you went on and explained the thing carefully to her,” I suggested.
“No, I did not. I just changed the subject, and told her it was a fine day.”
And that, I take it, is typical of much of the effort to interpret life to the deaf. We can always tell them that it is a fine day. The old lady sat contentedly in the silence, unaware of the fact that near at hand the orchestra was working gloriously through what the local paper called a “fine musical program.” The chances are that she was better off in the silence. Most of us hear too much, anyway.