A friend of mine—a new teacher who just started recently—is having a rough week.  We had a long talk about teaching in general and how to get past the rough spots.  I agreed to put some of my advice for my friend into a blog in hopes that it might help someone else out, so for better or worse, here you go:

1) Wise Up.

Deaf Education isn’t just about imparting knowledge (which is what you were probably taught in college).  Deaf Education is also about the politics of being right.  From the moment you accept a job as a teacher, you are surrounded by dozens of people who not only think they’re right… they want to prove it.  Some have been burning to prove it for decades.  And some, long before you ever shook hands with them in the hall and said “hi,” had no qualms whatsoever about using you to do exactly that.

2) Recognize the difference between an administrator and a Merry-Go-Round.

I once worked in a school where a kid started whirling around inside of the classroom with a sharpened pencil in each hand.  This was only his latest disruption in a string of increasingly dangerous screw-ups.  For safety’s sake, I sent him to the office.  Before that same period was up—no exaggeration, this was less than five minutes later—the office sent him right back.  The principal felt the situation had been defused, you see, and the kid really just needed a time-out.  I was told to focus on developing some alternative classroom management skills, because my current approach wasn’t really benefitting anyone.  So in time I did develop such a skill: I learned to recognize which administrators I could trust to do their jobs, and which administrators I could trust to hand a shotgun back to a ten year-old if they thought the act would help them avoid a confrontation with Mom and Dad. 

3) Accept that even people you don’t like or agree with personally might also be good teachers.

Just because certain other teachers don’t like or respect you, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t know what they’re doing in a classroom.  Don’t reject this possibility out of pride, arrogance, or insecurity.  Accept it and make the realization your strength.  After all, if it’s true, then the reverse must logically also be true: The fact that they don’t like you doesn’t automatically make you incompetent.

4) Realize that there’s such a thing as a bad student. 

There’s a saying that goes like this: “There are no bad students, there are only bad teachers.”  My take on that?  True, but false.  The younger a student is and the less he can think for himself, the more his “bad” behavior is probably a product of bad teaching (note: not all teachers work in schools).  The older he gets, however, the more his bad habits are a product of his own continuous choices.  Once he gets past kindergarten, he’s been warned.  He has been told to finish his homework, be respectful, and not bully others.  If he arrives in your classroom and still hasn’t figured out how to do these things, it’s unlikely that his troubles are the sole result of your being too stern with him or your failure to inspire him. 

5) EROEI—live or die by it.

“Energy Returned on Energy Invested” is a brutal little equation of efficiency that demands sustainability, and it will not be denied.  If you’re putting more effort into teaching your students than they’re putting into learning from you (or conversely, if they’re a classroom full of intellectual dynamos and you’re slogging day after day through the equivalent of a mental tar pit), someone is eventually going to run out of gas.  People ultimately have bad weeks and rough spots in Deaf Education because someone has been putting too much in and someone else hasn’t been getting enough out—both usually for far too long.  So if the overall enterprise has recently started feeling like a giant net loss of energy… now you know why.

Have you read Paul Schwartzman’s recent article in the Washington Post (entitled “Gallaudet’s New Aesthetic Openness”)? If not, please do take a look-it’s pretty good. Schwartzman’s focus is on Gallaudet University’s drive to develop a number of adjacent properties that it owns along Sixth Street using an architectural design concept called “deaf space.”

Something that showed up in the story:“Since its founding 144 years ago, Gallaudet’s separation has been driven by the belief that the deaf were better off immersing themselves in their own culture. Their insularity is symbolized by the eight-foot-high fencing and thick stone walls that line the university’s perimeter.”

Let me make a few things clear at the outset. I think that the concept of “deaf space” is absolutely fantastic, and if Sixth Street can be redesigned and rebuilt, I’m excited about that!  I can’t wait to see what it will look like!

That being said, I’d like to tell you three stories.

The first job I ever applied for was a stock boy position at a local Piggly-Wiggly.  They were hiring.  A “Help Wanted” sign in their window said so.  They just wouldn’t hire me.  The manager of the store said I needed to be able to hear the P.A. system when the cashiers asked for price checks.  This was 1983, years before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed.  Not that it matters all that much …

Then there was the factory foreman I worked for right out of college (this was 1992… ADA had been passed by that time) when I was having problems finding a job in my field yet needed money.  I cut my hand while working on the line one day and waved at him so I could go put on a bandage.  He saw me, and he saw the blood—it was a moderately deep cut and the blood was already trickling down my wrist—yet he didn’t come over to take my place.  In fact he left me there to work through my pre-lunch break and half of my lunch hour before finally having someone come over and relieve me.  I got extra time off later on during my shift that day, but that’s not the point.  By that time a good quarter of my glove was saturated.  This guy had been radiating tension all week, so I asked him a couple of days later if he had some sort of problem with me.  He snapped, “It doesn’t matter what you can and can’t hear in here.  You gotta move, move, move!”  I never asked to be treated any differently from anyone else while I worked there, so to this day I can’t really tell you what he meant.

And finally there was a summer job that I held many years later while in graduate school-also well after the establishment of ADA.  I was a camp counselor.  This camp catered to deaf children (along with blind children, children with cognitive disabilities, and so forth).  While I was working there, the director of the camp, a hearing man, remarked casually to me one day, almost as an afterthought, that he was thinking about not hiring deaf staff members anymore.  They were only good for the weeks that the deaf kids were there, you see, and during the blind and CD weeks, he didn’t want to be in the position of effectively having hired two people to do one job.  It would be better if all the counselors could hear, that way nobody would have to run around interpreting.

My point: It is theorized that Gallaudet’s future students will desire “integration into the broader world.”  I think this is a reasonable theory, since  I too desired such integration. The obstacles I had to climb over, however, had nothing to do with Gallaudet’s walls.

A story that I’d like to see in the Washington Post is one that looks up that factory foreman and asks him why he did what he did.  Even after all of this time, I’d like to know.  Does that grocery store owner recall his refusal to hire me twenty-five years ago?  Would that camp director be interested in knowing how I felt after he basically told me that deaf people were only useful for working with other deaf people?  Had any of these guys even heard of Gallaudet?  If we showed them pictures of a Sixth Street now lined with strategically placed panes of reflective glass, would they give a damn?

Assuming we could break through and get honest answers out of them, we could possibly gain insight into the types of walls Gallaudet’s graduates might still have to climb over (regardless of how much more accessible the modern-day “broader world” is supposed to be compared to the less-accessible one of old) in order to both find and keep jobs.

But even that would only be the beginning.  I promise you, there are a lot of people—both hearing and deaf—who won’t appreciate that story or ever want to see another like it.  And any attempt we make to find out why will be beaten to death in a barrage of comments accusing the deaf person telling such stories of being an outright liar, of being angry and always focusing on the negative, or of playing the victim.  On top of that, maybe the factory foreman didn’t see the blood!  How can the grocery store owner be blamed when ADA didn’t even exist back then!  If we deaf people can’t get past blaming hearing people for all of our problems, we deserve to be treated with indifference!  The world isn’t fair, get used to it..!

Gallaudet’s walls are a lot of things.  They’re stone and iron.  They’re eight feet high.  They’re undeniably there, and once reduced to rubble they’ll make a good photo in the Washington Post.  They’re also an easy answer, and therefore a distraction from a much broader and deeper set of issues surrounded by walls of an entirely different kind.

As we continue to face them, I doubt that we’ll find a bulldozer to be of much use.

Here’s a joke about America’s Energy Plan for you: A guy walks into a bar filled with average Americans and randomly asks them if they’ve ever heard of global warming (and the potentially serious impact it could have on future generations of human beings all over the world).

“Of course,” almost everyone replies.  “I saw An Inconvenient Truth!  I know all about…”

“Have you ever heard of peak oil?” the guy asks, interrupting them all. 

Practically nobody has, and that’s the joke.

If you don’t get it, don’t feel bad.  As recently as last April I wouldn’t have gotten it either.  Oil has been around my whole life.  I have never had any reason to question its presence or potential absence.  Yes, there were dim and then more urgent warnings in the background, but these were always related to pollution, to environmental devastation.  And after all, I’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth too.

I never thought that worldwide oil production might peak in my lifetime.  I never thought about what would happen if it did peak and then remained flat while worldwide demand for it continued to rise.  And I certainly never thought about what might happen if worldwide production entered terminal decline in the midst of that overwhelming demand.

Then a friend of mine told me what peak oil was all about, and I haven’t been able to look at anything in the same way since.  I can’t look at the furniture in my living room without trying to calculate how much oil went into its manufacture and transport.  My bookcase, for example, is made out of the wood of an old barn (I recycled and did my part to save the environment, yay me!) but how much gas did the carpenter burn driving out to the site of that old barn to load the two by fours into the back of his pickup truck?  How much electricity did he burn cutting the wood with his table saw?  My television, this laptop, how many barrels of oil?  My easy chair, my front door, its lock, my son’s plastic swing, the light bulb glowing in my lamp?  The entire townhouse I live in, the city I live in? 

How much oil?

I’m from Wisconsin, land of row upon row of corn green and wheat yellow in the summer.  How much diesel (derived from oil) to power the tractors to plow and harvest the fields?  How much more to transport the kernels and grain to the trucks and boats and planes that take it all over the world?

How much mass starvation if oil hits three hundred, four hundred, or five hundred dollars a barrel?  You can maybe put a solar panel on the roof of a tractor’s cab to run some of the air conditioning, or the radio, but can that solar panel drag a plow?  How much oil goes into the production of a solar panel, anyway?  Or a wind turbine?  How much oil to mine the metal that makes a propeller blade?

I’m not an energy expert, so I need to know the answers to these questions.  Because there are things that I just don’t get.  John McCain wants to build nuclear power plants.  Barack Obama wants to temporarily tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down gas prices.  How much oil does it take to mine and transport an ounce, a pound, a ton of uranium?  If you release a million barrels of oil from the Reserve, how many barrels of oil does it take to fill it back up again, especially if (and probably when) gas prices go back up a few months or a year from now?

I don’t know if this is going to amount to much, but I’m not going to vote for the guy who can’t or won’t answer this stuff.  And for what it’s worth, I’m going to tell my wife and everyone else I know not to vote for him, either.   I want both candidates to discuss their views on peak oil on public television.  I want them both to tell me what they plan to do if the peak is five years off, twenty, or if it occurred five years ago.  “America is addicted to oil” doesn’t cut it anymore… that’s like saying human beings breathe oxygen and water is wet.  “I’ll get America off foreign oil in ten years” isn’t good enough for me either.  I don’t care if oil isn’t going to entirely vanish tomorrow.  I want a president who plans—and acts—as if it will. 

Did you know, for example, that algae holds great promise as a third generation biofuel?  What do our candidates think about that, and how will they scale up production beyond a few demonstration plants?  Does either candidate have a plan for creating hydrogen production facilities that run on renewable power?  How about installing an infrastructure to transport and store hydrogen so our cars and trucks and tractors can run on it… without relying on petroleum?  How do we rebuild our electric grid so that plugging in our hybrids five years from now doesn’t black out an area the size of Los Angeles?

I don’t know the answers to these questions.  But my President has to.  If the era of cheap and easy oil is over, the political era of cheap and easy promises is over, as well.

All right, let me get this straight. First the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) told Oscar Pistorius that he was ineligible for the 2008 Summer Olympics… not because he’s a double amputee without a chance in hell of beating, much less competing against, “able-bodied” runners, but because he has an unfair advantage over them (the IAAF claimed, however, that their decision was not directed at Pistorius personally). Pistorius appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and the Court ruled that the IAAF had not provided enough evidence that Pistorius’ Cheetah Flex Foot carbon fibre transtibial artificial limbs (or prostheses) gave him an advantage over able-bodied athletes.

So Pistorius, jubilant, competed recently in the paralympic Dutch Open and won the 100 and 400 meter races last Sunday. He came in at 47.92 in the 400 but needs to be under 45.55 to qualify for Beijing. He plans to participate in what FOX Sports calls an “able-bodied race” on July 2nd in Milan, Italy, another in Rome on July 11th, and another one in Lucerne, Switzerland five days later.

So far so good, right? Pistorius is at last making some headway toward qualifying for the Olympics. I personally hope that he not only qualifies, but eventually brings home the gold.

But let’s backtrack a few laps.

Pistorius’ prostheses, his J-shaped Cheetah blades, are apparently a wicked pair of running limbs. I’m neither an amputee nor a prosthetics engineer, so I can’t tell you much about the capabilities of a good prosthetic limb. And what’s more, I know even less about running in general (which is to say that I generally run only when chased). So please don’t expect me to weigh in heavily on either topic.

But I find it utterly fascinating that the “disabled” label used to describe Pistorius has remained constant through a mind-boggling variety of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situations–an issue that is probably overlooked because so much of the controversy surrounding Pistorius’ prostheses focuses on whether or not the blades are making him a little bit “too able.”

In almost every news article I have read on the guy, Pistorius is set up as a disabled person/runner. This is done directly using thorough (if not quite exhaustive) descriptions of his legs and through the use of the label “disabled” itself. If he is not immediately labeled “disabled” in one of the opening paragraphs, then it is noted (for example, in the FOX Sports story mentioned above) that he’s going to compete against “able-bodied” athletes, a statement that implies Pistorius is not a member of this group.

Now this alone isn’t what gets to me. After all, the whole thing isn’t that much different from cochlear implants. Put the implant on, and you can supposedly hear better. But take it off, and you’re the same deaf, hard-of-hearing, hearing-impaired, and/or disabled person (pick the label you like best) that you were before. The only difference is a question of degree. I’ve not yet heard of an implant model that enables a deaf or hard-of-hearing person to hear better than a fully hearing person.

Such is not the case, apparently, with Pistorius. Remember that it is being argued that he has an advantage. Maybe his prostheses make him lighter, give him more spring, more tilt, more whirl, whatever. I don’t know. The point is that some people seem to think that Pistorius’ prostheses makes him faster than flesh or blood legs and feet would make him (though again the Court of Arbitration for Sport has not yet seen compelling evidence for that claim).

No matter. My question here is if a prosthetic or otherwise “assistive” device propels a person over the line that divides “equal to” and “better than,” then why is that person still “disabled” even when he has the device on?

Let me reframe that. I’m profoundly deaf. Some people consider my deafness a disability (I don’t personally, but that’s beside the point). Fine. It’s arguable that the whole thrust behind the invention all of these “assistive” devices is the fact the world sees me as disabled in the first place—if it didn’t, why put so much effort into inventing something to “assist” me?

And so far as that goes, I can even see why a lot of people would still consider me to be disabled even with the implant on. After all, considering the technological capabilities of the cochlear implants currently on the market (I suppose this goes double for digital hearing aids), if I put the implant on, I probably wouldn’t now be able to hear “perfectly” or even “better than perfectly.” I might be able to hear “somewhat better” (though maybe not—the effectiveness of the implant varies from individual to individual, but that’s also beside the point), but “perfectly” or even “better than perfectly” does not enter the equation. At least not yet.

Keep that in mind: “At least not yet.” Because if assistive devices were all in a race against each other, the current capabilities of Pistorius’ prostheses are way ahead of the current capabilities of cochlear implants. Whether the argument that Pistorius has an advantage is correct or not, it will be a while before anyone can make that argument about an implant user. Pistorius’ prostheses are not making him “equal to” everyone else in the race (something implants still can’t do). They’re supposedly making him “better than” than everyone else.

And yet he’s still disabled. Do you notice how nobody has let go of that yet? With the prostheses on, with them off… with an advantage, without one… it’s all green eggs and ham in the media. Pistorius remains “disabled,” and everybody else remains “able-bodied.” Think about it. Why the need to hold onto this psychology? Why the need to continue to label someone disabled if he has now apparently been rendered better at something than an able-bodied person could ever hope to be?

The world at large seems to be making three simultaneous and contradictory statements. Statement One: “You are disabled without your prostheses.” Statement Two: “So long as your prostheses are not the equals of (take note of the phrase “the equals of”) flesh and blood limbs, you are also disabled, even when you have the prostheses on.” And finally, Statement Three: “When you make use of prostheses that are not only the equals of flesh and blood limbs, but in fact advantageous over flesh and blood limbs, you are nonetheless still disabled.” To see what kind of disturbing implications this type of thinking has in store for deaf people, replace “prostheses” with “cochlear implants” and “flesh and blood limbs” with “normal hearing ability.”

Someone will have to explain the justification of Statement Three, because I don’t get it. It seems to me that as the capabilities of assistive devices advance, the only disability that will really be left will be the inability to see beyond the device itself.

I have a friend who used to be a mid-level manager of a bank. During a restructuring phase (not of her design), she was ordered to fire somebody–a good, hardworking guy. He hadn’t done anything wrong or failed to perform his duties in any way. He was just the low head on the totem pole. It was the first time my friend had ever done anything like this. The night before she had to fire him, she became so nervous she went into her bathroom and threw up. The next day, twenty minutes before the close of business on Friday (five minutes prior to the time she was supposed to call him into her office to fire him), she went into the bathroom and threw up again.

Now while I feel bad both for my friend and for the guy she fired (who might even today still be looking for work—you never know), I’m honestly glad that there are still people left in the world who react in this manner, and puke at the prospect of having to tell somebody that today is his last day. If this type of person didn’t exist, the world would soon be overrun by people who propose amendments to amendments of amendments.

I should pause here to tell you that I have nothing against parliamentary procedure per se. In truth, I don’t really know all that much about it. I have never read a parliamentarian’s guidebook. I’ve never chaired a meeting. But I’ve sat in on many, both in organizations I worked for and in organizations I didn’t. I know how to propose things, second things, discuss things, and vote. I’ve skated through my entire career on these four skills alone. I used to think that’s all I would need. After all, the point of any workplace meeting—especially a meeting in full parliamentary swing— should at its core be about improving conditions by solving problems, right? If you solve problems you create a better product, and if you create a better product you attract more customers, who in turn create more business. These truths would seem to apply equally to workplaces where the “product” is a college education, a better video phone, or a matching set of stainless steel mouse traps. The more business you have, the less “restructuring” you have to do that involves going into to your bathroom and throwing up.

Which is why I don’t understand amendments to amendments of amendments. Whenever they’re made, everyone in the meeting has usually been sitting there for two hours already. The issue on the floor has been there for years in one form or another—this is simply its latest incarnation. Somebody doesn’t agree with the wording of the original proposal, so—bam!—the original friendly amendment is produced, the wording of which in turn inevitably generates further disagreement! Then the wording of this amendment is discussed for a while. If the disagreement can’t be resolved, presto! There is a motion to amend the amendment!

It should be pointed out that both the amendment and the amendment to the amendment are considered “friendly” at this point only because a mere three straight hours of meeting time have now elapsed. I have never seen a meeting entering its fourth hour in which an amendment to an amendment of an amendment was still preceded by that adjective. Rather, “friendly” is replaced by tittering.

Titter, just in case you weren’t aware of this offhand, means “restrained, nervous laughter” (I looked it up). There are many reasons, I think, for why people titter. Four straight hours of doing anything, even if the activity is pleasant for the first hour or two, runs the risk of wearing down on the nerves. I also argue that most people do not consider the act of amending amendments (not once but twice) to be pleasant. Additional strain is generated by the fact that once an amendment of an amendment has been proposed for amendment, nobody knows what the hell anybody else is talking about anymore. Nonetheless a vote must be taken or the issue ends up getting tabled, where it becomes old business to be resolved—or not—in the next meeting. Thus, titter.

Well, far be it for me to complain without proposing some sort of method for overcoming these obstacles to effective workplace governance. Here’s what I think should be done: One, take the amount of customers you have at any given point in time, paint that number on a big sign, and hang it up in the room where you’re having the meeting. Two, count the number of employees you currently have and put that number on another sign (hanging it up next to the first). Three, look at your business projections and come up with a simple mathematical formula showing how the former number affects the latter. If the latter number now has to be reduced because the former was never all that high to begin with (in part because the organization, after wasting its time crafting amendments to amendments of amendments, never actually got around to solving problems), then four, make a declaration at the end of the meeting that the organization is now officially in tough times. Any declaration of this sort should in turn require a scan of the notes of the last five years’ worth of meeting minutes in order to ascertain (and make a list of) exactly who proposed an amendment to an amendment of an amendment at any given point in time. If possible, such a list should also include the names of those who tittered after this phrase was uttered.

And finally, five: require each person whose name is on that list to become a member of the Firing Committee. These individuals should be charged with the task of informing everyone who will have to be “let go” of this year that they’re in fact going to be let go. Also charge each member on this committee with the additional task of following these ex-employees home to take down the further minutes of any subsequent family meetings that will no doubt occur once they (the people who got fired) tell their spouses. These minutes should be as complete as possible, and include a thorough analysis of any nonverbal cues that might be expressed (at the dinner table that night, for example, as the two spouses in question now try to hide the worst of their feelings from their young children).

Make them do all of this, and provide them with no bathrooms to throw up in.

Titter ought to vanish from workplace meetings fairly quickly after that, I suspect. Amendments to amendments of amendments, likewise, should also rapidly turn into rational, coherent discussion from there on out. But if that doesn’t happen, consideration of some new workplace policies might be warranted. People who turn what is supposed to be a problem-solving session into a friggin’ farce in the name of parliamentary procedure (or at least what they think is parliamentary procedure) should be shown the door at the outset, if not the backdoor of the workplace… then at the very least the door to that particular meeting room.

You might be tempted to think that because I’m from Wisconsin I have no real sense of objectivity when it comes to Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers. But you’d be wrong. To say that Favre is a football god is by no means any type of exaggeration. One of his rocket balls could drive nails through oak—no, through rock—from a hundred yards out. I’ve seen him get slammed into the frozen tundra so hard the impact carved out a miniature canyon. In fact I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him stagger (while entirely unconscious) the last ten steps to the bench after a particularly ugly hit. How he ever made it I’ll never know, but give him a couple of plays to recover and he’d be right back out on the field again. He never missed a start in over two hundred and fifty regular season games. That’s over sixteen years of professional football, of dragging himself out to the huddle no matter what body part got smashed up this time. The guy is my age, for God’s sake—right around thirty-eight—and I shudder daily at the thought of climbing three flights of stairs just to get to my office.

With that in mind, you’d think I could forgive him for retiring.

And I can… I guess. Reluctantly. It’s not easy. You have to understand. Brett Favre is crazy, albeit a different kind of crazy now than he was when he first started. When he was younger he was completely nuts. He’d throw into double and even triple coverage without breaking a sweat. I’ve seen him win games with Hail Mary passes that bounced off of the helmets of the defenders and into the hands of our guys. Feats such as that are how he earned the nickname “The Gunslinger.” Half of the time you couldn’t tell whether a reception was a miraculous accident or simply a case of him getting bored with the ease of throwing directly to the receivers. The other half of the time you didn’t care. You were jumping up and down in living rooms and bars all across Wisconsin with your friends—beer splashing out of the pitchers, nachos flying in all directions—because in the fourth quarter he finally stepped on the gas. I can remember an entire decade in which it seemed that the Pack was always trailing in the last five minutes of the game. But no matter. Ten point leads, twenty point leads… Favre could demolish them all. Five minutes was an eternity to that guy. It was an eternity to you, too, and your lungs. If you had to hold your breath any longer, they’d explode.

The thing I’m going to miss most about Brett Favre is his touchdown victory sprint. In the seconds that follow a score he will literally drop thirty years before your very eyes, and go from being thirty-eight to being eight again. It’s like watching a colt gallop around a corral, only this colt will jubilantly tackle his own receivers in the midst of the excitement. It’s almost more fun to watch him do the touchdown sprint than it is to watch him play.

But so what, you’re probably thinking. All NFL quarterbacks are like that. You don’t understand. It’s different with Favre. It’s different because if you saw the Packers-Raiders game back in December ’03, then you’ve seen the dark mirror of that jubilant energy. You understand what he’s been through.

I remember the game because Favre’s father had just died the day before. Favre was already in California, and decided to stay with his teammates and play the game. He said his dad would have wanted him to. If you read the newspapers the next day you would have seen the cold statistics… final score 41-7 in favor of the Packers. Favre threw for very nearly four hundred yards and four touchdown passes, accumulating a near perfect passer rating by halftime. He completed twenty-two of thirty attempts by the end of the game, squarely hitting twelve different receivers.

But the statistics don’t really do justice to the enormity of what actually happened out there. Favre was devastating in the opening half of that game. His precision, however, came at a price. In a way you could only understand that game if you had been watching Favre for years; the colt, the gunslinger, the football god. Favre in the ‘90s was full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. With every Hail Mary pass he threw, he also threw the heart and the hope of every Wisconsinite watching up in the air along with the ball. He had us praying on a play-by-play basis. We loved him because he forced us to believe not only in him but also in our team and probably even in God again. Even if he was stoppable as a human being, and even often as a flesh and blood quarterback, you knew that no opposing team would ever make him quit trying to win—nothing would crush that resolute gung-ho energy.

In Oakland he was still crazy, but he was a grim sort of crazy. He still threw into double coverage, but this time you didn’t need to pray that he’d connect. And what’s more, you knew it immediately. That night he was unstoppable as a human being and as a flesh and blood quarterback. This is my opinion, and I could be wrong, but I don’t think he could bear to be human just then. His mind was nowhere else but on the ball and where he had to throw it—not on his wife’s battle with breast cancer, not on his recovery from painkiller addiction and a drinking problem, and probably not even on his father. If he let himself think about anything else he would have cracked. Thus he focused all of his enormous energy on becoming the Brett Favre we prayed for every time he threw an interception in dozens of games past: a machine of accuracy.

But as I said, he paid for it. He aged years during that game, and he was never quite the same from there on out. He never got that total focus completely back, and he never got his former wildness completely back. He was just as magical as he ever had been, and he commanded just as much hope and faith in Wisconsin as ever before. He was still “our” gunslinger, just as much as Green Bay has always been “our” team. But somehow, something was different. And it wasn’t long after that game that he began flirting more seriously with the idea of retirement.

I am going to miss Brett Favre. He wasn’t just a football player. He wasn’t just Green Bay’s quarterback. He is beyond legendary. He is beyond even awe.

To me, Brett Favre is football.

There’s a double meaning in that title. Watch for it.

I’m writing this for a friend who is having a hard time making a major life decision because she’s afraid. I understand. All of us to an extent have to worry about what other people will think of us—whether we blog or not, whether we take a stand on something or not, or even whether we stay in our current positions of employment or not. Everything is political in this community now. Maybe everything always has been.

I spent the first two years of my career working in a signing environment, but eventually I moved and started working in an elementary school that happened to house an oral program for deaf students. Laura*, the hearing woman who interviewed me and the overall supervisor of the program, said she wanted more deaf people working in the school because both of the Lead Teachers there were hearing.

Now back in 1995 I still wasn’t really all that into the politics of our community. I had always talked—even after I learned to sign. When I was informed that I wasn’t supposed to sign in that particular school, I was fine with it. It was, after all, an oral program. If I had a problem with what was being asked of me, I could have simply requested to be placed in a different school, and that would have been the end of it.

But I didn’t care, as I said. I wanted to work with deaf people. Oral deaf children are deaf people. I had total confidence in my ability to speak clearly and make myself understood to those kids. I had a bit less confidence in my ability to pick up on what they might say to me, but so what? Name one job in which you as a deaf person must interact with either hearing or other deaf people who speak where that particular challenge isn’t going to be a challenge. You have to eat, and in order to eat you need a paycheck, so how many options do you really have?

Anyway, I remember arriving for my first day of work just as the school busses were dropping the kids off that morning. A young woman came up to me and asked me if I was Chris and I said yes. Her name was Michelle and she was one of the assistants who worked for the program. She welcomed me and introduced me to another woman—April—the Lead Teacher I was scheduled to work with that day.

April said something that I didn’t catch, but she also wasn’t facing me fully, so that wasn’t surprising. She and Michelle exchanged a few words and then April turned and walked through the front doors of the school. She didn’t look angry, she didn’t stomp away or anything, and to tell you the truth I had no idea at the time that something was wrong. But something indeed already was. About three weeks later, after Michelle and I had gotten to know each other a bit better and were having a beer after work one Friday (Michelle could sign, by the way), she told me that April wasn’t too happy about having me around.

By now I already suspected this. I saw a lot of things go on in that classroom that I’m not going to get into here, because if I did that you might be tempted to attribute the rising tension between April and myself to those particular incidents. But they had nothing to do with what Michelle signed next:

“Do you remember when you first met her? On your first day, when she and I were talking right before she turned around and walked away from us both?”

I nodded.

“She said, ‘I question Laura’s decision to hire a deaf man to this position.’ And then she went inside and called Laura to complain.”

This remains a personal record for me to this day. Workplace politics are inevitable and unavoidable. Hence the title of this story—You Can’t Hide. But I have never been able to re-accomplish the impressive feat of irritating someone (who had never heard of me before, mind you) within two minutes of meeting that person. Well wait, that’s not precisely true. I’ve irritated quite a few Blockbuster and Starbucks clerks in my day by telling them I’m deaf. But April already knew that I was deaf. So that makes her somewhat unique.

“What did she have to complain about?” I asked.

“Don’t let her bug you,” Michelle said. “She’s always like this.”

“But what’s the problem?”

Michelle hesitated for a bit. Then: “…You’re a deaf person who doesn’t lip read well working in an oral program.”

Now that’s scary for a lot of reasons. It scares me that a part of me can see where April is coming from—after all, the last thing an oral program needs is yet another communication barrier, and in a way (in April’s view, anyway) that was me. It’s scary because to accept that argument—not just understand it but really accept it—is to shut down entire career avenues for myself, and therefore starve, or go on SSI, or work on some soul-killing job where I rarely even see other people. After all, where should it all stop? If I want to work for the Washington Post as a reporter, for example, shouldn’t I consider their needs as well? Why should it only be the Washington Post that has to consider mine? Why do they deserve to have to put up with a communication barrier and run the risk of possibly ending up with a story that contains wrong information because I didn’t lip read something accurately (or even with no story at all)? Or if I wanted to become a doctor or a counselor for non-signing people… How is the communication barrier that my weak lip reading skills pose for others some sort of a boon on those jobs? In fact how are my weak lip reading skills not an even worse risk?

It’s also scary to live your life sensing that on some level certain people, especially people like April, expect you to be conscious of this. They expect you to justify for them their inability, their unwillingness, to find a way around those barriers. Preferably without ever having to talk to you at all. In fact they think you’re somewhat selfish—no, unrealistic—to even expect them to look. You make them uncomfortable with these unrealistic expectations, and the bottom line is that they want you to stay away. If you won’t stay away, if they have to put up with you, then they don’t want you to complain or stand up for yourself or even seek to better yourself. You’ve already used up your stress-production allotment around them, you see. You exist.

Unfortunately you can’t hide from these attitudes, my friend. There are people all around us (again, hearing and deaf alike) who wholeheartedly buy into these types of messages even though they will vehemently deny it… or may not even be aware of it. That’s probably the scariest thing of all—to acknowledge that because we live in their midst, many of us will never feel welcome no matter where we go.

I’m telling you this not to frighten you further, but to give you hope. Which do you think is more likely, given the fact that April had a problem with me within two minutes of meeting me: I did something wrong, or she had a pre-existing set of attitudes and beliefs that had nothing to do with me? If you think that the latter answer is the correct one, then try to list all of the things that you can possibly do that will resolve somebody else’s pre-existing problematic attitudes. Especially when you can’t read his mind or know anything about his past experiences or current perceptions.

You probably won’t be able to list anything. And what’s more, you shouldn’t try. Not “shouldn’t have to” (though that’s true also). Shouldn’t, period. Because if other peoples’ prejudice or fear or irritation (or even their innocent inability to figure out what to do about us at any given moment) becomes the driving force that decides the quality of our lives, then our lives will become miserable, isolated, frustrated, lonely durations of existence in which we realize nothing of our true potential nor explore any of the paths that we otherwise would have freely taken.

So you can’t hide. That’s the double meaning. “You can’t hide,” meaning you can’t escape any of this; and you can’t hide, meaning you have to fight this. You have to fight to make things better, if only just by making the decisions you need to make without worrying overtly about what anybody else might do to you or say about you once you’ve made them. Because if you don’t deserve to feel unfulfilled and constantly deprived, then you can’t escape the conclusion that nobody else does, either. Thus refusing to live in fear isn’t just a choice.

If you truly want others to fulfill their potential as well, it’s a responsibility.

*All names have been changed.

I’m a regular blogger here on Deaf DC.com, but I have been away from the blogsphere for the better part of a month now because my son was born just a few weeks ago. He’s a full-time job in and of himself–if you have children of your own I’m sure you can understand what I’m talking about.

I mention my son here only because his birth factors into something that I want to say to the both of you as two current leaders of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. The first blog that I read on your recent letter to Pepsico was written by my fellow DeafDC.com blogger Shane Feldman. He didn’t print your entire letter, though he did provide a link to your website. To be honest with you, I didn’t click on the link in order to read the original letter—nor did I comment on Shane Feldman’s post—because I was just too exhausted. To be clear, my exhaustion does not stem from my new role or responsibilities as a father. My exhaustion comes from having to deal with attitudes such as yours.

It appears that not so long ago Catherine Murphy, your Director of Communications, issued a memo to the Indiana AG Bell Chapter Leadership outlining how to deal with those who have been protesting against your organization as of late. This memo contains several planned “media messages.” I would like to draw your attention to three:

1) AG Bell recognizes there are many choices available to parents when their child is diagnosed with a hearing loss, including spoken language, sign language and total communication.

2) AG Bell supports informed choice and serves as a resource for those parents who specifically choose spoken language education for their deaf or hard of hearing children. 3) AG Bell does not “prohibit” or is not “against” the use of sign language if parents decide that is the best course of action for their child. AG Bell simply supports those who choose the use of spoken language for their child by serving as a resource for those families.

In his blog, Shane Feldman did not post the parts of your letter to Pepsico that read:

“Your advertisement perpetuates a common myth that all people who are deaf can only communicate using sign language and are, therefore, isolated from the rest of society… We would also like to remind you that with the amount of money Pepsi will spend on just one 60 second spot to air during the Super Bowl, you could help an untold number of families obtain hearing aids and other professional services that are costly and in many cases not covered by medical insurance.”

These statements are analyzed elsewhere (by fellow blogger Mishka Zena). In fact it wasn’t until I read what she had to say that I finally clicked on Shane Feldman’s link and read your letter in its entirety. Upon reading it, even though I am still as exhausted as I was before I sat down at my computer, even though I’d much rather be spending this time with my son, and even though the Deaf blogsphere is by now replete with outraged postings regarding your recent letter to Pepsico, I have nonetheless decided to stay at my computer and write my own response to you. Would you like to know why?

I am not entirely sure yet whether my son is hearing, deaf, or hard-of-hearing.

He failed his first hearing test at the hospital, you see, and even though the doctors reassured me and told me not to worry—that many newborns’ ears are still filled with fluids shortly after birth and therefore many of these newborns fail their initial hearing test… they’d test him again in the morning—I didn’t sleep that night.

I wasn’t worried about him “being deaf.” I’m deaf, after all, and I have proudly made my deafness into a central part of my identity. I was worried about him growing up deaf in this world. I was scared for him to grow up deaf in our current educational landscape. I was scared of fourth grade reading levels. I was frightened for him to grow up facing the same rejection and outright hostility I faced at times—not only from the “Hearing World” but also from other Deaf, deaf, and hard-of-hearing people. I was frightened because I’ve spent my whole career hearing horror story after horror story from (or interacting with outright) parents who had to ceaselessly fight “the System” to get basic services, or parents who didn’t care enough to fight at all. I have always dreaded coming into contact with the latter group—but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m ready to join ranks with the former as a parent myself.

I have a friend with two kids. He told me that the moment you hold your child in your hands for the first time after he or she is born, the psychological remnants of your old life will drop away; the life that you lived largely for yourself. You will truly realize that your world is bigger than just you. I’ll be honest. When I first held my son in my hands, all I could think about was how beautiful he was. I didn’t have that “moment” my friend spoke of until my son failed his first hearing test. After that it wasn’t a moment. A “moment” ends. What I feel: this disturbance, this lingering sense of fear and unease, still hasn’t gone away. I don’t think it ever will. And I think that one source of of these feelings is you. By that I do not only mean you two as individuals—Karen Youdelman and Alexander T. Graham—nor even through your representation the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

I also mean you: people who recreate the world I grew up in, intentionally or not; a world that apparently neither understands Deaf people nor makes more than a superficial effort to embrace them (or American Sign Language). Now it’s one thing when you create that world around me. I have survived despite the unceasing interference of you in every step made, no matter how simple or positive, toward building a world where American Sign Language is truly considered by parents as a feasible communication option for their deaf children; a world in which they do not fear this language, or buy into the same “isolation” myths that you imply they (as members of “society”) believed from the very beginning, through no doing or undue influence of your own. I think you play a much bigger part in that myth’s perpetuation than you’re willing to accept or ever have been. I think this myth that ‘Hearing Society’ supposedly believes is actually your projection onto them. Without your influence they probably wouldn’t have otherwise known what to think about the impact of American Sign Language on the so-called “isolation” of deaf people.

I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet, but I swear this to you: I will not let the world I grew up in, the world you helped create, become the world my son grows up in.

Perhaps I will start by comparing your letter to Pepsico with the three statements made in the Indiana AG Bell Chapter Leadership memo, and sharing my analysis with anyone who cares to read it: To me, you are not an organization that recognizes that there are indeed “many” choices available to parents… including sign language. Your organization is not a mere “resource” for those parents who specifically choose spoken language for their deaf or hard of hearing children. You don’t just “simply support” them. Those terms imply that you are far more neutral than you are. And while I personally never seriously entertained the notion that your organization was anything but neutral, in my book, your letter shows me that I was right not to. I see your letter to Pepsico as a criticism against ASL-users (as well as those who support them or otherwise assist them in advancing awareness and appreciation of the language and of American Deaf Culture) that you need not have made. Pepsico is not the problem. You are.

My son passed his second hearing test, though we will have a follow-up hearing test soon just to be sure. No matter what we find out, you can bet that American Sign Language and English will continue to be the two primary languages used in our household. In fact, we will be a family because of American Sign Language. If my son is hearing, through ASL I will not be isolated from him, and he will not be isolated from me. If he is deaf, or becomes deaf, the result will be the same. American Sign Language will bring us together, just as ASL brings together—and always has brought together—countless souls in our society.

The day you find within yourselves room for this truth will be the day I’ll be less afraid for any deaf child growing up in this world.

In almost every blog I read these days about a deaf person standing up for himself, there will usually be at least one comment that looks something like this:

“Oh, grow up! Not everything is about audism! You can’t blame hearing people for not knowing how to react…”

This type of comment rarely varies with the story. The deaf author of the original blog might have assertively resolved a problem with an airline attendant, a pet store employee, or anyone else. Nonetheless this type of comment informs him in every case that he was wrong to do what he did. It also doesn’t matter what type of assertive action the deaf author actually took. Calmly talked to the guy? Oh grow up! Assertively expressed frustration by saying, “When you said that, I felt irritated”? Not everything is about audism!

Don’t you find that kind of response disturbing? I do. For one thing, it’s an expression of frustration in and of itself (indicating that the commenter can tolerate his own frustration but not anybody else’s). I also find it disturbing because I happen to agree with one part of it: indeed, not everything is about audism.

But so what? Plenty of things are about ignorance, and ignorance is bad enough. Many of us know all too well how it feels to put up with hearing people’s ignorance day after day. The hearing flight attendant didn’t know what to do with us; so now we’re a bit weary of flying. The hearing pet shop employee had no idea how to meet our communication needs, so now we’re on guard against the next clerk that might say something insensitive. We can let these things go, but if we don’t do so efficiently, an isolated incident can quickly feel like an unrelenting bombardment of ignorance. And ironically enough, this is when we’re most likely to respond with anger—not assertiveness.

Why should that be so?

Some people unfortunately believe that anger and assertiveness are the same thing, and furthermore, they’ve been trained to believe that anger itself is inherently bad (rather than a natural emotion). Thus they shy away from developing their own assertiveness skills—in much the same way that they shy away from expressing (or even allowing themselves to consciously feel) anger. But in the end that system cannot work, because anger is generated from stress. If a customer service rep hangs up on you during a relay call (thinking you’re a telemarketer), that causes stress. If the flight attendant wants to bump you up to first class because your original (and the only remaining) seat in the coach section is right next to the emergency hatch—how will he be able to open it if he can’t hear the instructions?—that causes stress. It causes stress even when you get a freebie out of the situation (a first class seat for the same amount of money as a coach seat, for example). You might argue: Who wouldn’t want to be bumped up to a first class seat from a coach seat? Good question. But how good will you keep feeling once you realize the airline attendant apparently didn’t think enough of you to hand over the laminated set of illustrated instructions that she was holding right there in her fingers?

Where do you think all of that stress goes? It adds up, and you’ve got to deal with that stuff. If you aren’t dealing with it, rest assured that it will someday deal with you—probably by giving you a heart attack. Stress doesn’t magically dissipate just because you’ve trained yourself to stuff it down and ignore it. Stress doesn’t acknowledge your dysfunctional belief that irritating events will somehow simply bounce off of you. You can’t cheat your way out of getting rid of the stress, either, not even through so-called “healthier” outlets. A hard game of racquetball won’t help you get over the way the ignorant hearing clerk at Blockbuster treated you last week because the racquetball isn’t the problem. The clerk has been clueless since you first met him a year ago, and he’ll still be clueless tomorrow. No matter how many times you smash the ball into the wall; in the back of your mind you’re going to wonder whether or not that clerk might have long since learned from the error of his ways if only you had said something to him!

What if all of your silence, all of your “good,” non-confrontational behavior in fact helped create a large part of your resentment toward the guy? Maybe that’s why we keep seeing these types of comments. Some people cannot handle their discomfort over watching other deaf people stand up themselves because it reminds them too much of all the responsibility they never took for their own lives. That’s why they need to emphasize so strongly that “not everything is about audism.” The criticism might be true, but nine times out of ten it’s also irrelevant. Thus it distracts others from the process of developing their own healthy boundaries, their own healthy techniques for resolving conflicts. And why should that surprise anyone?

If you don’t know how to assert yourself, distraction is probably the only coping skill you have.

We could do much to counteract the political paralysis in our community if we realized something once and for all: The “hearing world” in a very real sense does not exist.

Now before I get into this, I want to admit that I probably as much as anyone else am guilty of perpetuating the propaganda responsible for causing so many deaf people to believe that it does. When I talk about “Hearing America” being largely closed to deaf people, for example, I’m doing the same thing others are doing when they say that this world is “a hearing world.” I’m creating the image of overwhelming, crushing numbers, united against us in hostility.

For the sake of figures we can work with, let’s leave the 6.5 billion* people (yes, most of them hearing) currently vying for closet space on this smoggy globe of ours out of the argument and focus instead on just America. Because you can bet that when John Average from Somewhere, U.S.A. starts talking about “the hearing world,” he isn’t talking about illiterate Chinese peasants (illiterate in both printed English and Chinese, by the way) currently submerged up to their butt cracks in muddy rice paddies who have never owned or even seen a computer. He means people like himself: in possession of at least a high school diploma with a job, 2.5 kids, and a mortgage loan he probably now sincerely wishes he had never taken out. To him the world is “English-speaking” because that’s the language his paycheck is printed in.

All right, fair enough. Let’s pause here for a second to consider not only what “Hearing America” actually is, but also what it’s capable of doing at any given point in time. Say that the population of this country is currently 300 million, and of that number, 30 million are deaf or hard of hearing. That leaves 270 million hearing people for deaf people to contend with.

And you will contend with them. You will eventually someday have a job interview with a hearing employer, have your knee whacked by a hearing doctor, or try to order a cheeseburger without pickles from a hearing waiter who apparently equates deafness with mental retardation. These will be frustrating, maddening, oppressive, and humiliating experiences. They will collectively grind away at your soul, eroding you from within, increasing your sense of helplessness to improve your lot in life.

But you will speed that process along considerably by multiplying one isolated, hostile idiot by 270 million, because it is highly unlikely that you will face such a number at once. In fact it’s equally unlikely that you will ever face such a number at all.

Other writers have already made the point that, just as 30 million deaf people are not shaped by the same cosmic cookie cutter, hearing people are also probably quite different from one another. I agree with this argument, and don’t want to expand on it very much here. When we refer to deaf people, in many ways there is no “we.” There are Deaf people and deaf people; deaf people with cochlear implants and deaf people without them. There is widespread disagreement amongst D/deaf people regarding how deaf children should be educated, and so forth. We’re united only in our disunity. If any deaf person seriously believes that all deaf people want the same things, many of us would probably place him in the category we’ve assigned to airport accessibility personnel, since that group seems to be the final stronghold for those who believe all deaf fliers should be pushed to their connecting flights in wheelchairs.

But if there isn’t a “we,” then for the same reasons there also isn’t a “them.” Or at least not a “them” that’s 270 million hearing people strong. And that leads me to the topic I really want to discuss here: logistics. The gathering and transport of people to the place they’re needed at the time they’re needed.

Don’t you find it kind of ironic that when D/deaf people scrape together two hundred protesters to go and fight something, their critics will say, “See? This cause is so very important to all deaf people everywhere; only two hundred out of 30 million bothered to show up!” Or twenty. Or two. Well, out of 270 million hearing people, supposedly united in hostility (against that particular cause, anyway, if not against all deaf people everywhere), how many of them bothered to show up? If it sucks so much that a small group of D/deaf people could only organize two hundred active and visible supporters out of thirty million, shouldn’t it suck even worse if “the hearing world” can’t match their numbers at the site of a given conflict? If they’re so numerous and all-powerful and dead set against what’s happening, I mean? When we talk about how the reputation of the Deaf community has been trashed in the eyes of the hearing world (after all of the recent protests that have happened, for example), is it so unreasonable to ask whether or not the minds behind those 270 million sets of hearing eyes actually agree with this statement? I’ve never seen 270 million negative comments under even one negative online editorial in the Washington Post. I’ve seen maybe a hundred, tops, and many of them seem to consistently come from the same people.

I’m not just asking here for an accurate assessment of the actual physical numbers “the hearing world” can definitively align against any given group of D/deaf people who decide to stand up for something. I’m not even only questioning whether or not those opposing forces are going to be neatly divided between hearing and deaf people, because in reality there might end up being many hearing and deaf people who support a given cause, just as there could potentially be many hearing and deaf people who are against it.

I’m asking whether or not D/deaf people who currently feel oppressed and helpless need to keep feeling that way. Especially if they managed to whip up twenty people to join the picket line, while the other side (with 270 million “supporters” supposedly at their disposal) apparently couldn’t whip up anyone to counter them.

Don’t you think maybe that our sense of oppression doesn’t just stem from hearing peoples’ raw numbers? Maybe it’s more about the fear generated from false beliefs. Maybe more than a few of us (and I’m not talking about hearing or deaf people here anymore, I’m talking about anyone who happens to unite for a common cause) have been living our lives as if we expect the other’s side’s cavalry to come charging in at any moment and cut us to ribbons under a million swords. But exactly how is that supposed to happen if the place we’ve chosen to fight doesn’t have room for even one of these cavalrymen to draw his sword without poking the cavalryman seated up high next to him? In fact, how many horses can you actually fit into an area the size of a high school gym? If that’s the place where the conflict is occurring, what you’re going to see is maybe thirty horses inside and the rest of them outside doing little more than standing around creating steaming heaps of horse dung.

Translation: If we need to fight “state governments,” what we’re probably going to actually end up doing is fighting certain individuals within state governments, and not the whole government. Making things seem bigger than they are doesn’t do anyone any good. In any given System, you can always find the terror-stricken and bitter (or both) who will oppose any type of change whatsoever, those who will passionately fight alongside of you for reforms, and the lethargic who don’t really care one way or another. Yes, those you end up fighting can be incredibly powerful. They can be well funded, and have at their fingertips a devastating Propaganda Machine.

But one function of that Machine, part of its way of keeping you down, part of its strategy for smothering every spark of external dissent before it can blaze into a fire, is the repitition of the message that if you take on that group, you’re actually taking on the whole world. That can’t possibly be true. You’re just taking on that group. And even if their group numbers thirty thousand to your two hundred, even if their group has $18 million to your $374.36, there is still an immense psychological victory to be found in cutting their group down to size. Thirty thousand isn’t God. And once it becomes apparent just how determined you are, their thirty thousand can be rendered just as helpless, bumbling, and as scared senseless as your two hundred probably feel right now. Or your twenty. Or two.

So take heart. And the next time you feel helpless and overwhelmed, step out once again into “Hearing America,” albeit this time with eyes that are open to the truth. Your neighbors, the people looking for Christmas bargains in Walmart; that’s Hearing America. The postman delivering your mail, the guy in the beat up Toyota driving up the street right now on his way to his factory job—are they going to oppose you? Do they even know you? Do they know anything about deafness? That’s Hearing America. Multiply them by 270 million. They aren’t organized. They haven’t made any detailed plans to genetically engineer you out of existence. In a determined fight they’re essentially non-combatants. In many ways they don’t matter very much at all, not even when false implications of solidarity are constantly being used to frighten you into submission.

If you want to be effective, narrow down your targets. If all you’ve trained yourself to see is “the hearing world,” everything that you can change blurs out of focus.

*I am grossly (and probably unforgivably) rounding off all of my numbers here. Please do correct me if you have precise figures.