“When I get my hearing aids, will I be able to hear you?”

“When I get my hearing aids, will I be able to hear you?”

I was six years old, sitting in Mrs. Dobus’s first grade classroom. She was standing across the room, talking to the class. I couldn’t hear her.

So I raised my hand. She called on me. And I asked the only question that mattered to a kid who was just starting to understand that something about him was different.

She said, “Yes, you should.”

That was it. A simple exchange. But it was the moment everything clicked for me.

Until then, I knew things were harder. I knew I missed things other kids caught. But I didn’t have language for it. I didn’t understand why. I just knew the teacher’s voice disappeared when she walked to the other side of the room.

That question, the one I asked in front of my whole class, was the first time I truly recognized I had a hearing loss. Not because someone told me. Because I put it together on my own. I couldn’t hear her. Hearing aids were coming. The two facts connected.

I was five or six. About to be formally diagnosed with profound hearing loss. And the first person to name what was happening wasn’t a doctor or my parents. It was me, raising my hand, asking if the thing they were going to give me would fix the problem I’d only just realized I had.

It wouldn’t fix it. Not the way I imagined. But I didn’t know that yet.

#LLHearingMyStory #HearingLoss