Talk and repeat

Often, when I'm talking with my neighbor, he'll ask me to repeat something I've said (unless our conversation is on a sheet of paper). I sometimes ask if there's too much noise either in his house or from traffic outside, but one of the reasons he'll ask me to repeat something is because I don't talk loud enough.

That's actually been a common problem of mine.

I once got into the habit of speaking "loudly," even though I didn't know if my voice was loud enough. And sometimes I'd have to ask people if they heard me or if I said something loud enough. Sometimes I'd repeat something I said because I'd think I didn't say it loud enough the first time, and I'd get a dirty look because people thought I was being moody or pushy. (I'd politely explain that I am deaf and I didn't know if I spoke loud enough the first time.) And then there were the many times when, if someone was with me, they'd discreetly let me know to speak louder and there was that understandfing that if I didn't know if I was speaking loud enough.

My mom once told me that after I lost my hearing, she would constantly encourage me to use my voice as much as possible. She had heard that people who became deaf often stopped speaking since they mostly relied on ASL to communicate, anyway, and their voices sort of "diminished" because they didn't use it often enough. I rarely, if ever, stopped speaking even when I was using ASL. Oh, sure, I would sometimes mutely sign to friends in high school, but mostly if it didn't make sense to talk, anyway (like once when we communicated through the windows of a bus). But I didn't stop speaking even when I signed. After all, I'd lipread interpreters in high school, and it was because of the fact that they spoke as they signed that I learned certain signs for words faster.

Admittedly, though, it can be difficult, lipreading someone AND looking at the signs at the same time. When I'm at church, that's pretty much what I do. My interpreter will speak as she signs to me. All the same, a lot of people who are deaf don't speak while they sign. I mean, if the person they are signing to understands them, they don't really need to speak. However, when a hearing person signs to me, he/she usually speaks as she signs. And I usually rely on the lipreading most of the time (that's pretty much relied on ever since I've lost my hearing -- that and written communication).

Still, I obviously have a hard time speaking loud enough. Just today, while my daughter rode the bigwheel that belongs to my neighbor's daughter, I called out to her, "Did you have fun with Kristi today?" She came up to me and asked, "What did you say?"

Oy.

Yes, I live on a busy street. But there weren't any cars driving by. And I thought I had called out to her loud enough. Obviously, I hadn't.

Obviously, talking louder is something I still need to work on. Again.