Unit 2 This is Sandy
I love it when my friends introduce me to new people, although I never let on. I love the proud and honorable expression they wear when they say “This is Sandy — she's deaf”, as if I were evidence of their benevolence. I also love the split-second shocked expression on the new people, the hasty smiles and their best imitations of what they think of as their “normal faces”. If they do the ritual well enough I turn my head ever so slightly and tuck my hair behind one of my ears, whichever one's closer to them. They never fail to say something nice about my pink hearing aids, while my regular friends beam on.
I'm thinking of starting a hearing aid collection, actually. They'd make better accessories than earrings: I once saw a catalog for clip-on hearing aids and hearing aid covers, and the products were most definitely fashion
statements in various shapes and hues. It'd be like the exquisitely expensive handbag Esther's dad got her when we were in high school. The rest of us could only admire, but could not, imitate, because our dads weren’t rich enough to spoil us that way. And now, only I can wear hearing aids: My friends can do nothing but gush.
To be honest, I quite like my deafness. It wasn't easy the first few years after the car accident and the stupid exploding airbag, but now it's become something that makes me special among my friends. None of my close friends are hearing-impaired; simply because I wasn’t born deaf. By the time I lost my hearing; I'd already accumulated a fixed circle of people, and they mostly rushed to participate in the drama.
You know how when you talk about your friends, you refer to them as Drew the Bartender, Carol the Feminist, Greg the Guy Who Can Knot a Cherry Stem with His Ton