My other brother, one year older, had an advanced sense of humor. He would read Mad Magazine at nine and laugh and laugh. I could not understand it but he also watched comedies on television, that new box my parents got. I seen one when I was smaller, at someone's house, it had a tiny screen. But this one had a larger one. And my brother Galen loved to watch it and would laugh. So I would sit beside him, I could catch a word or two being said on the television but not enough to get meaning. But every time he laughed it meant humor, and sometimes he would tell me what they said, or at least enough that I began to hear and understand more. It would be a slow progression, it was not the miracle of emotion and writing together, but it was emotion and the spoken word on the television. Shows have emotion but they are not always that evident to a child who is not hearing right, but a brother who was known and predictable it was good better start. And I could see what the people on the screen were doing, that helped. What is said in movies and TV to day still alludes me a lot, I miss about 25%, but then it was 90% or more. The radio, well, it would be years and years, and songs on the radio still allude me, or records, or MP3s.
At times English still sounds like a foreign language, kind of a dull fast moving chatter devoid of form. Some languages have more melody to them. Believe me, I have spent years around different languages and the problem of understanding is as strong as it was with English. Only with a lot of time and effort did English emerge as a workable form of communication if it was devoid of emotion and recognizable meaning. As a kid I relied more on the body language and emotional expressions on faces then on the words themselves. When I entered a room with lots of people I would look for the oldest most emotional little old lady I could find and I would stick close to her. I could understand her and she me. As an adult in a crowd of foreign speakers I do the same. It still works. Cheers for little old ladies, I do not mind becoming one.
My disabilities have never left me. Everything is the same, I have just learned tricks of the trade so to speak, that allow me to see beyond. We are all that way, none of us can go beyond our limits, that is without tricks of the trade. What is the next trick I would learn? Grade school continued as it began after my illness, I would watch other kids and mimic what I could and I managed to get by, under achiever I was called, but passed along. The next lessons would be learned in Junior High, I was eleven, a head shorter then anyone, immature, and not at all ready for the leap. I would be leaving the nurturance of one teacher all year in grade school to several different teachers. It will be hard to describe the shock, a nuclear bomb comes close.
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