What's That Pig Outdoors?

A MEMOIR OF DEAFNESS

HENRY KISOR

FOREWORD BY WALKER PERCY

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS

Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield

 

 

 

 

First Illinois paperback, 2010
© 1990, 2010 by Henry Kisor
Foreword © 1990 by Walker Percy
Published by arrangement with the author.
All rights reserved.

First published in the United States of America
by Hill and Wang, a division of
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990

Portions of Chapter 9 originally
appeared in the
Chicago Sun-Times.
In the
interest of privacy, the names of a few
principals and places have been changed.

Manufactured in the United States of America
P 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kisor, Henry.
What's that pig outdoors? : a memoir of deafness / by Henry Kisor;
foreword by Walker Percy. — 1st Illinois paperback
p. cm.
Originally published: New York : Hill and Wang, 1990.
ISBN 978-0-252-07739-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Kisor, Henry. 2. Deaf—United States—Biography. I. Title.
HV2534.K57A3   2010
362.4'2092—dc22   2009051739
[B]

For Debby
who wouldn't rest till
the book was done
and
for my parents
whose faith never flagged

Contents

Author's Note to the Second Edition

Foreword

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Acknowledgments

Author's Note to the Second Edition

Except for a few corrected minor errors of memory, the narrative of this edition, first published in 1990, is as it appeared as a slightly updated paperback reprint in 1991. The Epilogue contains all new material, bringing the events of my life up to date as of the winter of 2009 and outlining changes in viewpoint and attitude that have occurred over the years.

Foreword

WALKER PERCY

Here is a remarkable book. It is the autobiography of a man totally deaf since childhood. It is also the story of a man who became a distinguished journalist.

It would be interesting on either count. There are many autobiographies of deaf people and there are many autobiographies of distinguished journalists. But this is the only life story I have ever read of a deaf person which is also written by a first-class writer. The only exception is Helen Keller's
The Story of My Life
, not really comparable because Helen of course was blind as well.

And it makes all the difference, the splendid writing. If for no other reason it would be worth reading for the entertainment, a lively tale told well—and often extremely funny.

But what sets it apart and gives it its value is not merely the story of a courageous person overcoming a serious handicap—though it is this—but a moving account from a novel perspective of the universal experience, which most of us take for granted, of the human breakthrough into language. Or what should be a universal human experience. For in fact some of the beneficiaries of this book could well be not only the deaf or the teachers of the deaf or the acquaintances of the deaf but so-called normal hearing people who have still not made the breakthrough into this kind of literacy.

There is a personal connection here. My daughter is also totally deaf. She and Henry are both remarkable for what they have achieved in a hearing world. But the connection is something else, someone else, an extraordinary, eccentric, and wonderful teacher whom you will meet in these pages.

A native genius, the teacher somehow had the wit—and I think Henry would agree—to go to the heart of the matter, not only of the education of deaf children but of human intelligence itself. Here is how Henry describes it. She (the Teacher, as we thought of her) arranged things with “parents placing their faces in the baby's line of vision”—yes, she'd start at eleven months—“so that the child could associate the movements of their lips with objects and actions.” Here of course the Teacher hit upon what Helen Keller had discovered in her own way, the unique human trick of symbolizing, of putting together word and thing. Hers was, is, a revolutionary method which I think still has not received its due.

It is with her help and that of many others, with his own ebullience and good humor, with good teachers, good family, good wife, and plain guts that Henry Kisor not only made it but made it in high style—in spite of the knocks, some dumb teachers of the deaf, and such atrocities as “psychological testing.”

Here, among other things, you will also learn about such mysteries as how it is deaf people know when someone comes into a room and says hello behind them. And you will learn much besides, with considerable delight and a kind of smiling wonderment.

Preface

There's an old joke about three elderly deaf gentlemen, all lipreaders, aboard a train.

As it comes into a station, one looks out the window and says, “Ah, it's Weston.”

“Wednesday?” says the second. “I thought it was Thursday.”

“Thirsty?” says the third. “I am, too. Let's have a drink.”

This tale illustrates a central truth of deafness: lipreading is full of snares and delusions. The term “lipreading” itself is technically a misnomer, for the act involves much more than merely watching movements of the lips. “Speechreading” is a more accurate term; some educators of the deaf call it “visual hearing.” (I use “lipreading” here simply because it's the common term in the hearing world.) Broken into its components, lipreading seems an almost impossible circus trick, like juggling Indian clubs while spinning a dinner plate on one's forehead.

That story about the three old gents illustrates the biggest problem of lipreading: many sounds look identical. “M,” “p,” and “b” are made by bringing the lips together. “T,” “d,” and “l” all take shape with the tongue on the roof of the mouth just behind the teeth. As a result, the words “bat,” “bad,” “ban,” “mat,” “mad,” “man,” “pat,” “pad,” and “pan” all look exactly alike. To the eye there is no difference between “s” and “z.” Sounds formed in the back of the throat are impossible to distinguish from one another. “Cat” and “hat” can't be told apart, let alone “mama” and “papa.”

Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone and a teacher of the deaf, concocted a famous “trap sentence” to illustrate the ambiguities of lipreading. He would say, “It rate ferry aren't hadn't four that reason high knit donned co.” A deaf lipreader might think Bell had said, “It rained very hard and for that reason I did not go.”

Lipreading is not so much a skill as it is a knack, and it's best cultivated at a very young age. A tiny child's linguistic world is a simple one: two adults—mother and father—and perhaps a sibling or two. Their words and gestures become familiar and predictable. As the child grows older, that world expands, but it is still largely a small, familiar, and comfortable one of friends and school, of other children's mothers and teachers.

In the 1940s and 1950s, when I was growing up, almost all American elementary school teachers were women. American women, whose culture does not train them to suppress their feelings, are much easier for most deaf children and deaf adults to understand than are most American men, who have grown up in a society that values a poker face. For a lipreader, expressiveness must substitute for inflections and differences in emphasis that shade the meanings of spoken words. A cock of the head or slightly raised eyebrows, for example, can mean a question is being asked. Brows that reach the roof can indicate disbelief. A single raised eyebrow implies skepticism or contempt. The sentence “It was you who said it” can have three meanings, depending on whether the stress is on “was,” “you,” or “said.” A nod of the head, a jut of the jaw may be the only clues that a word is being emphasized.

Even region and nationality make a difference in expressiveness. In adulthood I have found that New Yorkers, who speak as fast as they can while moving their lips as little as possible, are exceptionally difficult to understand, while American Southerners of both sexes seem warmly expressive, relaxed, and easy to lipread. Foreigners, who tend to form words deep in the mouth and throat rather than with the lips, can be frustrating targets for the American lipreader. English-speaking French and Italians are relatively easy to understand, once the lipreader is accustomed to their particular accents, for their body language is eloquent and helps plug the holes of understanding.

Even for a child, the major component of lipreading is guesswork. It's often said that only 30 to 40 percent of lipreading is actual “reading” of each word; the rest is “context guessing” to fill in the gaps between the words that are actually understood. Did the teacher say “hat” or “cat”? The last three words of her sentence—“Put the hat on your head”—tells the deaf child that the teacher can't be talking about a cat.

Early on, youngsters with a knack for lipreading often learn that much of what people say in everyday situations can be predicted. Most of the time, for example, a dime-store salesclerk will say, “That'll be X dollars and XX cents” (a sum confirmable with a quick glance at the cash-register readout) and “Thank you. Have a nice day.”

In this way lipreading is like filling in the blanks in a crossword puzzle. It's far easier for the lipreader to understand someone if he already knows the subject of the conversation, for he can anticipate the words used to discuss it. If the subject is, for example, the Chicago Bears, a deaf pro football enthusiast will unconsciously be watching for proper names such as “Ditka” or even “Wojciechowski”—words he'd never understand in any other context.

Proper names are the lipreader's bane. We never catch names during introductions; “John Smith” is easy enough, but “Matilda Grosvenor” will fly right past. As an adult, I learned long ago, I can in certain situations simply ask for the other person's business card and at an opportune time sneak a look at it. Often, however, I must fall back on an old deaf person's gambit I learned as a youngster: if I am introduced to a stranger, then must repeat the introduction to someone else, I mumble inaudibly and allow those concerned to smile thinly and perform the introductions themselves.

Conversations among more than three or four people are nearly impossible for even highly skilled lipreaders to follow. It takes a few moments to catch the rhythm and sense of one person's words; by the time we're in the groove, someone else will be speaking. Often we never catch up, falling further and further behind as our minds slowly make sense of what we're seeing. Once in a while the light of understanding will shine upon us long after the talk has passed to another topic, and we'll drop into the conversation a comment or observation based on the old subject. It might be witty—even brilliant—but it will land with all the grace of a gooney bird on an asphalt runway. Fortunately, early on my friends learned to be amusedly tolerant of these appalling non sequiturs.

For lipreaders, one-on-one conversations are much easier—easiest if our interlocutors are at all familiar to us. It will take anywhere from a few moments to a few days to become accustomed to a stranger's speech, depending on how limber and expressive the stranger's mouth and face
are. I can consistently understand somewhat fewer than 50 percent of the people I meet for the first time, but familiarity will raise the level of understanding to 75 to 80 percent. Perhaps 10 percent of the people I come across will always be impossible to lipread.