****REVISED****
Brock Kawana
Professor Harrison
English 101
10 April 2009
People May Mistake Deaf Individuals for Throwing Up Gang Signs
“God gave man two ears, but only one mouth, that he might hear twice as much as he speaks.” (Ackerman, 191)
I am meant to learn by listening not by speaking. There is a difference from hearing and listening. When I listen I am taking in the information being brought to my attention. Hearing is more along the lines of realizing what is going on around me. In my own experience I have heard the likes of different individual’s state that they would like to have peace and quiet, for there to be a silence of the room in a literal sense. Then I have to ask myself, “Can there ever be complete silence in life?” Even a room has a certain ping to it. “Even if we don’t hear the outside world, we hear the rustling, throbbing, whooshing of our bodies, as well as incidental buzzing, ringings, and squeaking.” (Ackerman, 191)
I myself am the exact opposite when it comes to hearing peace and quiet. I love the sound of noise. I think that comes along with being the only boy growing up in a house with three women. That’s a lot of noise and fighting that seems to be never ending. It could be about make-up, clothes, or tampons. I would just sit there in my house and listen to the arguments about something so insignificant. I love embracing all the sounds of the world and just laying there and listening to it. Even the sound of silence has a certain ping to it. I am in no means saying that if I am laying there that I would want somebody to just come up and yell into my ear and I would enjoy that. There is a difference in the sounds of the world that are just unintentional they just seem to happen.
If I would walk down the road just by myself, I could hear the sound of a baseball bat hitting a baseball and the crowd cheering, then I would immediately jump to the conclusion that there was a baseball game being played at the baseball fields. Even though I did not see any part of the game, the players, or the fans, I still know that there is a game being played through relating those very sounds to what my eyes know as what those sounds make. I relate my sense of hearing to all my other senses without even realizing it.
The sense of hearing is more like a magician than anything. I do not have to see, feel, smell, or taste to know what it is. If I can hear how it is used in my daily life or what it sounds like we can draw a conclusion from our mind itself. As I sit here and type on this keyboard, if I were blindfolded and asked what sound I was making I would not say, “Knives going off a skull of a hamster.” That would just be outlandish and absurd. I could associate the sound of the keyboard with my mind to create the realization that I am listening to a keyboard. I believe that the sense of hearing does not get as much credit as the other senses but it is just as vital as the rest.
Even if I were to listen to music I could associate all the sounds of the music within the song to decipher what musical instruments are being played. Even if I have never touched a guitar or drums I would still be able to know what sound those instruments make through the process of learning. I know that a drum makes the heavy boom to the song and the guitar has its own special sound. Each instrument is different and they all accumulate to make a song. The sounds work together to form a complete song.
Hearing can also affect my emotions without me even realizing it. When I hear somebody scream in horror I get scared, a baby crying makes me feel sympathetic for the baby, and laughter makes me feel good. Laughter is a contagious affect just through hearing. In Diane Ackerman’s book, A Natural History of The Senses, she describes laugher as “We open our mouths, force air from our lungs into our larynx, our voice box, and through an opening between our vocal cords, which vibrate.” (182)
Laughter being such a simple task of our body’s reaction makes others feel good. My question is why? I feel as though human beings can get through any situation with laughter. No matter how down I feel, out of place or anything laughter is always there. It is shared by every person on every part of this earth. Everybody laughs, everybody has to laugh, no matter if you’re a monk, a mime, or even a guard in front of the royal palace. They all have laughed at some time in their life.
To appreciate our sense of hear I would have to imagine what it would be like. When I am asked the age old would you rather question of, “Would you rather be deaf of blind?” I have commonly answered with deaf because then I could still see. After reading the passage in Diane Ackerman of what Helen Keller wrote I have changed my answer to blind.
“Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus, the sound of voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir and keeps us in the intellectual company of man. I have found deafness to be a much greater handicap than blindness.” (Keller)
When I think of hearing, I associate it with music because I physically put headphones in my ears to listen. If I was to go to a football game it would be more along the lines of, “Let’s go watch the game.” Even though in all actuality I will be listening to the game as well as watching it. I do not watch the game on television with no sound so obviously the sound of the game is important just as much as physically seeing the game.
If I was to sit in a room with ten individuals and I was told one of these people is deaf could I pick them out? The answer would be simply no. On straight looks alone you could not tell who is deaf. It is taking away from their hearing ability but nothing about them as a person. They still bleed red, and still see the same things that you and I do. They just do not hear that baseball game being played or the keyboard clicking loudly over top of the light humming of talking in the library. It is as though a life without the ability to hear would be everyday the volume is turned down on the television. There is no grabbing the remote and turning it up, it is their life.
Revision Statement
When I looked at how I graded my own paper, I am my own ruthless critic. I am a procrastinator who is a perfectionist. It is a horrible combination of things to have but it is part of who I am. It can be changed, but it always seems to come out this way. I read my paper at the start and then proceeded to label it my shitty first draft. I gave myself an F, but in all actuality once I revised it, it was not that horrible. I did fix it up and took out the unnecessary parts of the essay that had no correlation to the essay itself. It is always overcoming my own ignorance and realizing that this is helping the paper to become better.
I believe the paper now has a better flow to it. I also fixed up my thesis so it could better outline the rest of my paper to the reader. I want to have a rising action that leads up to the climax of the paper and in the end the conclusion sums up my main points and the paper in its entirety. I may be the only one to give myself an F, but I will be the one to change that F to a better grade.
Brock Kawana
Professor Harrison
English 101
23 March 2009
People May Mistake Deaf Individuals for Throwing Up Gang Signs
“God gave man two ears, but only one mouth, that he might hear twice as much as he speaks.” (191)
In my own experience I have heard the likes of different individual’s state that they would only want peace and quiet, for there to be a silence of the room in a literal sense. Then I have to ask myself, “Why would they not want to hear anything, as if they themselves were deaf?” Even a complete silenced room has a certain ping to it. “Even if we don’t hear the outside world, we hear the rustling, throbbing, whooshing of our bodies, as well as incidental buzzing, ringings, and squeaking.” (191) by doing this they would be taking away their own sense of hearing by trying to block everything out. Is that our way of getting away, a type of meditation in its own right? To take away one of my senses is to take away a part of how I live my life.
I myself am the exact opposite when it comes to wanting to hear peace and quiet. I love the sound of noise and loudness. I think that comes along with being the only boy growing up in a house with three women. That’s a lot of noise and fighting about only God knows what. I love embracing all the sounds of the world and just laying there and listening to it. Even the sound of silence has a certain ping to it. I am in no means saying that if I am laying there that I would want somebody to just come up and yell into my ear and I would enjoy that. There is a difference in the sounds of the world that are just unintentional they just seem to happen.
If I would walk down my road just by myself and I could hear the sound of a baseball bat hitting a baseball and the crowd cheering, then I would immediately jump to the conclusion that there was a baseball game being played at the fields by my house. Even though I did not see any part of the game, the players, or the fans, I still know that there is a game being played through relating those very sounds to what my eyes know those very same sounds make. I relate my sense of hearing to all my other senses without even realizing it.
The sense of hearing is more like a magician sense if anything. I do not have to see, feel, smell, or taste to know what it is. If I can hear how it is used in my daily life or what it sounds like we can draw a conclusion from our mind itself. As I sit here and type on this keyboard, if I were blindfolded and asked what sound I was making I would not say, “Knives going off a skull of a hamster.” That would just be outlandish and absurd. I could associate the sound of the keyboard with my mind to create the realization that I am listening to a keyboard. I believe that the sense of hearing does not get as much credit as the other senses but it is just as vital as the rest.
Even if I were to listen to music I could associate all the sounds of the music within the song to decipher what musical instruments are being played. Even if I have never touched a guitar or drums I would still be able to know what sound those instruments make through the process of learning. I know that a drum makes the heavy boom to the song and the guitar has its own special sound. Each instrument is different and they all accumulate to make a song. The sounds work together to form a complete song.
Hearing can also affect my emotions without me even realizing it. When I hear somebody scream in horror I get scared, a baby crying makes me feel sympathetic for the baby, and laughter makes me feel good. Laughter is a contagious affect just through hearing. In Diane Ackerman’s book, A Natural History of The Senses, she describes laugher as “We open our mouths, force air from our lungs into our larynx, our voice box, and through an opening between our vocal cords, which vibrate.” (182)
Laughter being such a simple task of our body’s reaction makes others feel good. My question is why? I feel as though human beings can get through any situation with laughter. No matter how down I feel, out of place or anything laughter is always there. It is shared by every person on every part of this earth. Everybody laughs, everybody has to laugh, no matter if you’re a monk, a mime, or even a guard in front of the royal palace. They all have laughed at some time in their life.
To appreciate our sense of hear I would have to imagine what it would be like. When I am asked the age old would you rather question of, “Would you rather be deaf of blind?” I have commonly answered with deaf because then I could still see. After reading the passage in Diane Ackerman of what Helen Keller wrote I have changed my answer to blind.
“Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus, the sound of voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir and keeps us in the intellectual company of man. I have found deafness to be a much greater handicap than blindness.” (Keller)
When I think of hearing, I associate it with music because I physically put headphones in my ears to listen. If I was to go to a football game it would be more along the lines of, “Let’s go watch the game.” Even though in all actuality I will be listening to the game as well as watching it. I do not watch the game on television with no sound so obviously the sound of the game is important just as much as physically seeing the game.
If I was to sit in a room with ten individuals and I was told one of these people is deaf could I pick them out? The answer would be simply no. On straight looks alone you could not tell who is deaf. It is taking away from their hearing ability but nothing about them as a person. They still bleed red, and still see the same things that you and I do. They just do not hear that baseball game being played or the keyboard clicking loudly over top of the light humming of talking in the library. It is as though a life without the ability to hear would be everyday the volume is turned down on the television. There is no grabbing the remote and turning it up, it is their life.
