You’ll have to speak up.

So, hey, I’m not deaf. Not yet, anyway. Sometimes my iPod finds it amusing to do that get louder thing that the TV sometimes does. You know, you’re watching The Golden Girls and shaking your head at ancient, adorable Sophia and then the show cuts to an ad about cleaning products (daytime), new and interesting gadgets (mid-to-late-afternoon) and steaks that can be smothered with a veritable variety show of smothers (just-smother-me-with-a-pillow-and-get-it over-with-late-night). They are invariably, incredibly LOUDER than the syndicated sugar fix you were previously enjoying. My iPod does a similar thing where I’ll be listening to a full blast Pinback song because they’re kinda quiet no matter what quality the sound file is, and then, like a shark in the night, Danger Doom is suddenly marauding my eardrums, gnawing away at what little skin wall remains there.

But this is not the point. The point is, I’m not deaf yet but there are some people that are. And these people are not morons. With the exception of the ‘Please help me I am deaf’ card dudes who wander about in their woolen pants, dopy expressions slapped across their faces as if being deaf makes them somehow slightly chromosomally challenged as well. Sure, buddy, you’re a regular fucking Helen Keller.

Anyway! The point IS, that I have been seeing this Swiss Chalet commercial lately (I have already proven that television is far too prevalent in my life) where this Dad and Family get their Family Feed-in bill which he will pay for, and he is just blown away at the total. He is utterly flabbergasted that such a low, low total price, out here in public, could be what his family cost him this evening. He whispers low to his family like a fox guilty of stealin’ chickens from the coop out back that surely, they have been charged too little. Suddenly, with the precision of a hawk in both hearing and speed, the appropriately friendly faced and dumpy waitress lands on his shoulder, assuring him in a whisper that this, this is his lucky day. (“Well, here’s your lucky day”: bonus song lyric!) And then she, oh quirky Swiss Chalet Fraulein, asks why they are all whispering.

Then his sassy-ass son pipes up, ‘Yeah, why are we whispering’. His father’s withering stare and sarcastic, ‘You pay’ retort will scar the brat for life, as he struggles to live up to what he thinks are his father’s expectations, forever trying to find some common ground.

So for the deaf watching this commercial, or for the weirdos like me, watching it on mute, the captioning strangely includes the adjectives of ‘whispering’ and ‘normally’. Now, I don’t know why, but this struck me as hugely insensitive and, more importantly, absolutely ridiculous. Let’s say you were born deaf. Your notion of sound will likely incorporate touch more than anything else: where the concept of ‘louder’ is most likely stronger vibrations being sent through your body. You will have no notion of what a ‘whisper’, as the hearing populace defines it, sounds like. You will likely have your own definition but still, you are likely lucky enough to have your sight. You, valiant deaf person, can SEE that they are whispering. But, still, you don’t know what a whisper sounds like so we’re going to write it out here on this screen so you know what you’re missing.

If you had your hearing in days of yore but have lost it due to one too many nights in CBGB’s with a smoke in your teeth, a beer in your hand and a speaker in your ear, you once were known to whisper and to hear whispers yourself. Having done so, you would have likely leaned in close to your party, thus enabling them to hear your clandestine utterance. You, too, can SEE that they are whispering. But, still, you haven’t heard it in awhile and maybe you were thinking earlier today that you missed the feel of as sweet nothing being nibbled into your ear, so we’re going to write it out here on this screen so you can feel worse about it and be depressed and guilty about having taken such poor care of yourself in the first place.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a prickly little princess and I like to be contrary, but if I were the deaf person in question I am sure I would take this same mild offence. And I guess it is only a mild annoyance, after all. And I am not likely to ever have to deal with being deaf as cochlear technology is right behind robots and robotic limb replacements…at which point, I suppose, I’ll be able to get new ones.