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.