Deaf kisses

When I was 17 years old, I was quite bad tempered. I used to scream, shout and slam doors and generally behave in a common end-of-teenage-years manner. I also used to forget to wear my hearing aids.

So, on one visit to my lovely audiologist for a two-hour long painfully difficult, boring and tear-inducing hearing test I kind of lost it and the world of bad teenage behaviour and deafness merged.

This resulted in a weekly session with a hearing therapist, which pleased me as it also meant time off school.

My hearing therapist was stark raving mad… bonkers and in fact bonking – behind her husband’s back. And, as I didn’t really have any issues with being deaf, it was this that we spoke about. Her bonkers bonking! Isn’t bonking a fabulously 90’s word?

I used to sit there and listen as she poured her heart out to me and wonder what on earth I’d done in my past life to deserve such a liaison when suddenly she came out with something relevant to me…
Well kind of…

While talking about her dalliances out of marriage she suddenly pointed out to me that as a deaf person, hearing sweet nothings in bed would be out of the question and apparently (I was a young 17) lip reading at times like those would also be quite difficult.

I stored this information under ‘inappropriate things grown-ups tell you’, quit hearing therapy and soon grew out of my stroppy phase.

Then, five years later, I found myself on a campsite, in a tent, in the dark with a boy I quite fancied. It was freezing so we were cuddling to keep warm (It was all quite chaste, I promise) when suddenly he whispered something to me.
‘Pardon?’ I said
and he repeated himself.
‘It’s too dark, I can’t hear you,’ I responded.
And so this went on as I frantically scrabbled about for my head torch.

He tried once more with his question when suddenly someone piped up from the tent next door, ‘Oh for god’s sake, just kiss him!’

And the romance was dead.