One-Eyed Jack with Snails in My Ears

With powerful hearing aids, I manage one-to one conversations fairly well. In groups, I can't sort a single voice from the collateral noises and using a telephone is next to impossible. My Ophthalmologist tells me I'm a one-eyed guy for life. I function only by developing coping skills and strategies. My latest strategic move was from the ever-flat Prairies to the exotic Temperate Rain Forest of Vancouver Island.

It started fifty years ago shortly after I started teaching. For six weeks a country doctor had prescribedpenicillin for a severe head cold until an allergic reaction to that so-called silver bullet, landed me in the hospital. Another antibiotic cleared my head in three days. It was too late. I'd lost almost all my hearing in my left ear and twenty-five percent in the other. There were cut outs of certain frequencies so from that day to this. music, is close to racket as I lack the full chromatic scale. I'm more-or- less tone deaf.

I continued teaching with the help of a hearing aids in both ears. My students called them snails and I do too. I had to change my teaching strategies. To each new class, I explained my disability, asked for their cooperation and never failed to get it. They learned to speak out and I learned to move about the classroom. I've been upfront and proactive ever since.

I was able to teach forty years at secondary, college and university levels; in all, ten places including eight years in Nigeria and one in Nepal. I've taught all races and a wide assortment of tribes from the Sub Tropics to the Canadian Arctic. For fifteen of those years, I did teacher training.

I began lecturing at the University of Saskatchewan in 1980, but found after couple of years my hearing had deteriorated to the point where I was stressed to evaluate interns doing teaching practice or presiding seminars, all, places where highly- nuanced language is important. My teaching career appeared to be ended. Then, I made a most fortunate strategic move by shifting from the university to the classrooms of an all-native high school in the inner city. I taught twelve more years. Aboriginal students, by their culture, are great respecters of age and sympathetic to the infirmities of others. I'd have been sport in many other classrooms.

I retired at age 65, short of a full pension due to another hit to my hearing. I was not a burnout nor was retirement mandatory. One morning , I awoke and could not hear my own voice. A virus in my right ear left it no better than my left. I snailed both ears with more powerful aids to last out my last year. One outcome was beneficial. My ears equalized, correcting my habit of turning my head to the speaker. I often looked devious; now at least, I look people squarely in their eyes.

This worsening deafness was traumatic. The concentration I had to put into hearing is so terribly tiring that at times, I just had to tune out in fatigue. All my life, I have loved conversation, conversation - company. I could roll into a party and impress or appall people with what I knew. I've lost that professorial conceit. Not so long ago, I could host a dinner table. preside seminars and handle a lecture hall. Music, like the speech I barely hear, is not sufficiently nuanced to give me confidence. Nowadays, music is just noise,;no melody, no harmony, only bone-felt rhythm. Occasionally, I duty dance but my partner must lead - some like it.

Shortly after my retirement, a bungled cataract operation blinded my right eye so for weeks, I could not read, watch close-captioned TV or compute for any length of time. Temporarily, I gave up driving. This loss in sight triggered (vestibular) disorders associated with my inner-ear hearing loss. I suffered tinnitus'sbad balance. Immobilized with this cocktail of afflictions, I became severely distressed and was put on anti-depressants. Isolated and lonely, I felt sorry for myself; consequently, becoming a self-made shut in. I was keeping my own company so-to-speak, which is not all that exhilarating. A Physiotherapist gave me eye and balance exercises raising my expectations but only helped a bit.

My circumstances did not turn around until my twin sister visited. "John" she said, you are an accomplished sufferer. Pull out of your isolation, change climates, put yourself in a retirement home for ready company and for gawds sake, start writing again. I moved to a retirement home, (the youngest in the place,)took up pool aerobics, joined a writers club, attended lip-reading classes and volunteered labour on an organic farm. My disorders remained but their effects were muted and I reduced to minimum medication.

It's pragmatic to recruit an interpreter companion to surf in social groups. For example, when I started pool aerobics (My snails refused to join) I noticed a middle -aged woman of fetching face and figure, the only one in something close to a bikini. Since, I could not hear, and not wanting to appear standoffish, I blurted out. "I,m sure your voice is as lovely as yourself but I can't hear a word you say. From then on and ever so close, she spoke into my cupped ear interpreting instructions, shushed me when too loud and introduced me to others. She had readable lips and good body language too. I have used that "lovely line" several times. I'm not without guile.

These days, I attempt to talk in groups, albeit on my own topic which is a marvellous defense mechanism while at the same time, the recipe for a bloody bore. As a former "teach" I know how to project my voice and question for the short answer. My lip-reading instructor asked me about my eyesight. I selected a lip-reading classmate of sweet disposition. Incidentally, she was a striking Icelandic blond who had recently immigrated to Canada.

"Erika, I said," shutting my good eye, "you are downright homely today."

Here face went into a pout. All she said was, "Yaw!"

"Even using both my eyes, you still look blowzy."

"Yaw! Yaw!"

"But, with my one good eye alone, (I shut my bad eye), you're - you're - as gorgeous as ever."

She roared laughing while the class went into hysterics. However, she punished me. "Yaw! Yaw! " "From now on I nicking you One Eye." That's how I got stuck with One-Eyed Jack.


Moving West was a bit of a trial for in my vertiginous state, I wonked my knee lugging China boxes and was on a cane for two months. Family and friends took the wheel for the three-day trip.

Here on the left bank of Canada, I've replaced a sedentary life with one more outdoorsy, active and sociable. I accept the aging processes and correctives for self neglect (dentures, diabetes, gluttony) but retain with rancour the medical happenstances that dulled my senses of sight and sound forever.

It's easy out here to ignore my snails and flawed vision in this sensual environment where I can smell the sea and the cedars, see fruit trees blossom in early March and hear sometimes, the treble of songbirds in unison or the single craw of a crow. Maybe it's just a recurrence of tinnitus - who cares? I'm on this island for keeps . As my senses invariably worsen with age, let it be here and may my sense of humour be the last to go.