Deafness lends itself to many moments of humour and sometimes embarrassment where you know you’ve got to laugh or you might cry!
With my friend Marilyn being totally blind with severe hearing loss and me being both severely sight impaired and deaf we can get into some pickles at times.
We experienced some of these pickles when we decided to go to our local Anglican church for its early mid-week communion service last week.
The first problem we had was being unused to the church with the early morning service as it seemed that their old method of having it in the choir stalls had changed and it was now in the Lady Chapel which we’d never been in. We arrived in good time but found most people were already there and were sitting in a continuous semicircular pew. I hovered with Marilyn in the doorway as I could not see quite where to go for the two of us to sit together.
It had been quiet and peaceful but suddenly someone spotted us and there was a big kerfuffle as some changed their seats or shuffled over so we could easily sit together. We edged in muttering ‘thank you’ and tried to quietly wriggle out of our coats. I opened my rucksack to get Marilyn’s braille tablet and my Ipad and keyboard and phone out. (When Marilyn can hear enough, she types STT for me using my Ipad and Keyboard but I also use my phone STT app Live Transcribe).
In the process, I was aware we were rustling and being a bit noisy, so we tried to get into reflective mode as quickly as possible. My Ipad was ready on my lap when Marilyn suddenly took my hand to finger spell something. I must have jerked and suddenly the Ipad slid forward and fell to the floor with a massive bang. Mortified I tried to grab at it and knocked the keyboard from Marilyn’s lap too! Quiet reflectiveness disappeared as people rushed up to help us pick things up again. I didn’t know where to look but at last calm descended as the vicar prepared to start.
Marilyn had previously downloaded the old version of the Communion service as neither of us would be able to read their service books. I saw it started with the Lord’s Prayer, so when the vicar began I happily joined in. Marilyn gave me a big nudge as at that point it was only the vicar reading it but I hadn’t realised!
As the service got underway, I realised the phone was picking up well, so I finger spelled to Marilyn that she didn’t need to type for me and from then on held the phone up in front of me to follow the service. I was a bit worried what the others would think? Did they imagine I was doing messaging or other things on my phone during the service? It was embarrassing but I couldn’t explain.
With the service being the old BCP format and language, my STT app on my phone had quite a struggle at times to interpret. In the prayers, ‘We beseech Thee to accept our supplications . . .’ became, ‘We beach our suffocations!’
One mistake which really started me laughing was again in the prayers when ‘We pray for those who travail and are heavy laden,’ became, ‘we pray for those who travel heavy laden.’
When Marilyn and I used to travel all over the country to do concerts and events, we always ‘travelled heavy laden’ as our van would be cram full of bags with things we ‘definitely needed for that trip.’ It made me chuckle to think Anglican churches using that service had been praying for us over all those years!
Other humorous moments included saying responses like ‘it is good to give thanks and praise’ when everyone else was silent, starting to share the peace when that wasn’t part of the service and singing the opening lines of a hymn verse not realising everyone else had finished!
Later in the pharmacy collecting a prescription for Marilyn I had my phone STT app ready and was waiting for my tablets. A lady collecting some medicine was being served by another member of staff and my phone was picking up their quite loud conversation. I suddenly realised my lady had come back and was holding my tablets out and asking something which I couldn’t hear. When I glanced at the phone it said, ‘you will need to breathe in deeply and may find yourself belching!’ Shocked and starting to laugh, I thought, ‘What on earth is this!’ before realising that of course it was the other lady’s conversation that was still being transcribed! I kept trying to restart the app so as to ‘hear’ my own lady, but every time it picked up the other conversation rather than mine! I managed to guess her query in the end and got the tablets and also got even more details of how this other lady needed to take her medicine! At least she had no idea it was all coming up on my phone!
I guess that the perk of times like these is that the Lord does give us joy and laughter as part of the kingdom of Heaven. I am sure He is laughing with us in these moments and we can take them as a gift.
