As you know, I saw Fab-Friend-Who-Actually-Wears-Her-Hearing-Aids last night and, after reading yesterday’s rant, she reminded me positively of all the great things about being deaf…
We can sleep through practically anything – except 5-year-old boys playing Spiderman at 7am on a Saturday morning and bin men, who from the noise they make outside my flat, also appear to be playing Spiderman…
We can ignore people without them thinking we’re rude – so when you spot the ex-boyfriend across the street, it’s fine to walk on by oblivious to his calls of ‘I still love you, you know!’ Fab friend and I always find that boys shout this after us.
But here’s the best bit…
Life Costs Less
I’m not kidding, it really does. We get free local travel, discounted national rail travel and as I discovered last night, even climbing is cheaper!
As we were paying I noticed that Fab Friend’s bill came to quite a lot less than mine and as this had happened before I asked the till man why.
He looked up Fab Friend’s details and said, rather confused, ‘Eet says sheee ees dis-abled.’ Being deaf is not the most obvious disability so people don’t really believe us a lot of the time.
‘But I am too,’ I exclaimed with glee. ‘Can I have a discount as well?’
I could feel him eyeing me somewhat warily so I jumped to action and pulled out all the proof I could find – much to Fab Friend’s amusement.
There was my free travel card, my disabled rail card and here’s the best one, which I’d totally forgotten about, my Sympathetic Hearing Card!
I think this was the clincher as one look at that and he was tapping away faster than you can say disability discrimination and BOOM, as if by magic, climbing now costs less.
I love my Sympathetic Hearing Card – it’s more kitsch than a 70s lampshade and Afghan coat with it’s off-white appearance and retro imagery – goodness knows which ignorant beige-wearing person thought up the design but it’s function is actually quite vital. Say I had got run over by that fire engine – the cute boys in uniform could have checked my wallet and realised I was deaf and not stupid. But err…
probably dead.
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