Silence.

Julie Using Silence as a Teacher 

The world moves at a rapid rate, as does our communication. We are often expected to have a response ready to depart our lips while the spoken question is still hanging in the air off of the breath of the speaker. Our thumbs fly over touchscreen keyboards, hammering out phrases with emojis in place of punctuation to emphasize a point. We click and clack speedily (and some finger peck) on our computers to convey the latest “need to know” information via emails with great, and often unnecessary, urgency. 

The world is loud, reckless, and we are made to feel that we careening off the tracks if we slow down and pause our communication. We have effectively eliminated a pause, a moment of stillness, an interval of brief quiet. 

I have the ability to harness silence. I am able to loop it with my magic lasso, pull it close, and release it at the perfect moment. Only I know when to employ this mystical rope – a skill honed by years of teaching the tiny humans. I hesitate to reveal my prized, hidden talent – but it is something innocuously called, “wait time”. And it is exactly what it sounds like – a time of waiting, a creation of a safe, silent space between formulated thoughts and spoken words. I pause, and grant my students the luxury of being able to take a beat, gather their thoughts, create their words and then share them in the way that works best for them – drawing, speaking, or writing. I have learned to be comfortable in the silent pauses, the passive silence is my gift to my students to allow them to dive into their own minds without distraction or expectation to call forward their contributions, ideas, and opinions. 

Too often, we are listening with the intent to respond. I prefer to listen for the sake of listening, and frequently hold the silent space when my communication partner stops talking. I know that for some this deliberate pause is unsettling and uncomfortable, but for me I find it respectful. I am letting the other person know that I have been listening intently, and that I am ready to continue to listen for as long as necessary. I demonstrate my care and concern for others by not speaking right away, and quite often people will pick up the thread and continue to talk. 

I do not shy away from the silence, for it is my comfort with this stillness that has brought forth some of the best stories I have ever heard – whether the speaker intended to tell them, or not. For me, the silence does not always have to be filled – but for others, it is necessary – and that’s when the good stuff can come pouring out. 

Brad Is Uncomfortable with Silence 

I understand why Julie wields silence like a lasso, roping kids into answering her question. But I hate it. The first time I had bionic ears in school was when I was getting my master’s in library and information science. From grammar school to undergrad, I often found myself tongue-tied thanks to uncertainty. Did I hear the question correctly? If a classmate responded erroneously, did I hear that error rightly? Coupled with my allergy to speaking up in class, I sat through many a silence that stretched like Armstrong. 

Be it a check to see who did their homework or a start to a discussion that takes the lesson off to uncharted waters, I understand the need for silence. But introverts loathe being the center of attention. And speaking up does just that. This was where my deafness and introversion tie me in a knot (it’s a sheepshank if you’re curious). Even when I think I know the answer, I wonder “What if I misheard the question?” Then I’ll be both the center of attention and wrong. They don’t make desks big enough for me to hide under. So it was a Herculean effort for me to speak up. I did so occasionally. I was wrong occasionally. I was right occasionally. I hated breaking the silence on all occasions.

Even after I listened to Alice Cooper and I made school out forever, I did not get any more comfortable with silences. But I did get a new challenge: shutting up. Classes were always full of voices I knew. At the library or just out in the big scary world, when I’m talking with patrons or sales clerks whose voices I know only vaguely if at all, I tend to babble. Because the more I control a conversation, the more I’m likely to “hear” what they’ve said. Context clues, y’all.  Which is why I talk more than I’d like. 

Given my druthers, I’m a quiet dude. I’ll speak up when I’ve got something worthy to contribute to the conversation but not just to hear myself talk. I’ve got nothing against the loquacious amongst you. But that just isn’t me. Except in the face of silence. Because, for the hard of hearing, there’s a special type of silence. 

A silence that robs me of a great many  IQ points in the eyes of the other person. A silence that goes on too long and ebbs into a washed out feeling. The normal silence becomes an uncomfortable silence becomes an awkward silence. The other person’s face melts under the heat of impatience or confusion. My face becomes aflame with shame. I must have nodded and unwittingly agreed to something. A something that needs more detail. Detail that I’m incapable of providing. And now the silence is being wielded like a bludgeon. I’m being beaten because the other person is insulted. They think I spaced out or that they were tricked into a conversation with a simpleton. 

I laugh uncomfortably and ask them to repeat the last thing they said, that I didn’t hear it. It doesn’t matter that it’s true, the other person doesn’t believe me. And it’s times like these that reinforce my discomfort with silence.     

Julie Is Sitting in Silence 

At top volume, Brad is able to hear his preferred heavy metal music sans hearing aids as he clangs his weights around in the sunroom. I believe that he is also able to hear the shrill noises of birds outside the porch window while he reads, and I am fairly confident he can hear the alarm beeping on his iphone each morning due to his hearing loss not quite reaching the high pitches. I guarantee that he can hear my voice – however muffled – without his hearing aids in, as I will always make my point loud and clear, and I love getting that final word in during any humorous exchange, lighthearted kerfuffle, or heated argument. For better or worse, the man knows no peace from the sounds of the world or from my incessant chatter. 

In what is a central theme of our partnership, my hearing is the complete opposite as I have a severe to profound hearing loss in both ears. My audiogram looks like the giant slalom ski slope – the line starts at the top and plunges downward, stopping just shy of jumping off of the page completely.

 I tend to treat my hearing loss during the waking hours as a pesky fly, a nuisance that I brush to the side. I frequently forget that I wear hearing aids or that I require accommodations, but never shy from doing so as situations arise that necessitate such support. Each evening, when darkness falls outside of my windows, my hearing aids are removed, and I sink into complete auditory isolation in their absence. I am at once relieved of the active listening I must do to remain engaged – bobbing and weaving my head side to side to follow a conversation; lipreading; asking for repetitions and rephrasing of missed information. My shoulders sag and a breath escapes me as I settle into the welcome relief from listening fatigue. 

It is then that the awareness heightens that I have been plunged into complete and total silence. I tend to remain distracted by nightly routines, journaling, reading and then drifting to sleep to keep my mind occupied. I fight back against letting my brain begin its reminiscence of the sounds I used to be able to hear before my hearing continued its inevitable decline – Rocky barking, a door banging, my desk chair rolling on the floor and my fingernails tapping on a keyboard. Those sounds – and all of the others before them – have faded away. I become acutely aware and frequently alarmed by how little I can hear now without my hearing aids nestled in my ears, working their own brand of magic. 

The silence is deafening. 

Brad Knows Silence Isn’t the Norm in Libraries Anymore!

There’s a saying in the library world: “You’re not a librarian until you’ve been shushed by a patron.” It’s a rite of passage. In the stead of the entire library being quiet and conference rooms being the only place you can speak above a whisper (aka at a volume that I can hear with my bionic ears in), there are now designated quiet study areas and the rest of the library is the realm of normal speech. But before we get to the grown-up part of the library. I want to talk about the kid part of the library. 

I’m exempt from working the desk in my Youth Services department. It’s an accommodation. Everyone else could be pulled upstairs to cover the desk if we’re short-staffed. But not me. Because I can’t hear up there. The maelstrom of noise overwhelms my poor little brain. I have worlds of trouble filtering out background noise. I always have. Most hard of hearing people do. But I wonder if going more than twenty years without bionic ears leveled up my challenge. 

The brain is never as pliable as when it’s young.  I read a National Geographic article years back that said our brain changes until we’re twenty-five. (I think this is the article but it’s behind a paywall, so I can’t be sure.) I got my first set of aids when I was twenty-three. I can’t imagine the trouble I’d have filtering out background noise if I waited a few more years. 

But it’s more than the omnipresent background noise of the Youth Services department. It’s the kids. 

Kids’ voices are tough for me to hear. They present all the challenges I have when hearing someone’s voice, their speed is a challenge (be it too fast or too slow), their volume is a challenge (too soft or too loud), their enunciation is a challenge especially when they’re still learning how to pronounce the words. I don’t think I’ve ever heard more than one word in twelve from a kiddo that I don’t know. That means that if I go upstairs, it’ll be two people that need help, not just one.

So, I stay downstairs. But I don’t stay quiet.

The public computers are near the circulation desk and a place with comfy chairs we call the Conversation Area. Between poor souls cursing about RMV-1 forms and not knowing passwords at the computers and retired gents (more than a few who are hard of hearing themselves) talking about this handbasket we’re going somewhere in at the Conservation Area, there’s plenty of times when that half of the library rivals the Youth Services department in volume. That’s not even getting into the librarians behind the desk. Sometimes it’s just us talking (too loudly) amongst ourselves. But other times it’s being part of the cure for the loneliness epidemic. We’re more than just bookslingers. We lend an ear (no matter how well it works) to patrons who come in for the social service that comes with the library being the last free public indoor space. 

All that adds up to silence being an endangered species in the library. 

It’s loud and soft,

It does whatever it wants. 

Silence is broken.