Ears ≈ Eyes

I have a friend who's losing his hearing. He just visited me for a couple of days. Yesterday we were having lunch and talking when he kept turning his head and bending his opposite ear in order to hear me, so I said, "Do you want to switch places so that I'm facing your better ear?" We switched and then talked about it, and I told him stories about the visual equivalent where I sit at a lunch table facing someone and if the light is behind them I'll figure out some way for us to switch places. If they know me, I'll ask them, but if it's someone I do't know so well, I may have to do what amounts to turning my head and bending an ear.

So many of his stories about passing as a hearing person reflected my own in passing as sighted. We both have difficulty understanding everything that transpires in meetings. We are both sometimes interpreted as being aloof, distant, or just straight up assholes who don't acknowledge others, but really we just didn't see or hear something or someone. Sure, he could be brandishing an ear trumpet, and me sunglasses and cane, but there's a whole other set of baggage that comes attached to that, a passing as fully disabled and then being disregarded for a whole other set of reasons.

There ought to be a blog, and a theatre piece, about such stuff.