I may be deaf but I'm not an alien

"WHAT'S it like being deaf?" Have you ever blocked your ears to avoid your sister's screaming tantrums over a stupid Bratz doll? Well, that silence with a little background noise is what it's like.

Not all hearing-impaired people have the same level of hearing, however. When you do meet a hearing-impaired person, just do the basics: look at them when you're talking (as you should when you're talking to anyone), and speak clearly.

There's no need to shout.

I find it somewhat insulting when I introduce myself to people and they reply, "Hiiiiiiii-my-naaame-is-Raaachel ... Caan-yoou-hear-mee ... Am-I-speaking-looud enough for you?" Don't be insulted when I look at you like a retard, because you may as well be one.

I know curiosity gets the better of us but there is no need to look at the hearing-impaired like they're some sort of alien - there's a difference between being deaf and being clinically disabled or dumb.

When people talk about the "deaf", they tend to think of hand movements flying around, or that they have to talk slowly, as if to a foreigner.

Just asking what it's like to be deaf implies a difference from normal. What the heck happened to the saying "Nobody's the same, everybody's different"?

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I do not appreciate all the help out there for me as a hearing-impaired student. But people need to get the message that when someone says, "I'm deaf", there's no need for a big drama.

There was a time when a student would have to sit in the corner with a dunce cap on having done nothing but be "deaf and dumb". Hearing-impaired people were thought to be diseased, the work of the Devil, punished by God for some indiscretion.

Look at some of the earliest "cures" proposed for deafness:

Heat your urine using two dishes, and pour the water that is boiled off into the ear, stopping the deafness.

Fry peach kernels in hog lard and put drops in the ear until deafness is cured.

Climb up very, very high then jump down. The sharp fall will restore the hearing.

Had I been born in those times, I would have preferred to have been born in a Catholic region, where deaf people were considered to be under the curse of heaven, called monsters (nice religion, huh?) and put to death as soon as their deafness was satisfactorily ascertained. That seems preferable to undergoing one of their folk "cures".

Of all of those cures, jumping off a high peak seems to be the sanest option. Bloody right the sharp fall will knock the deafness out of you - it'll knock the life out of you as well.

Thankfully science has smartened up and we no longer believe in the whole pig fat in the ear strategy.

Now we have hearing aids and cochlear implants, entirely different man-made devices created for the same purpose.

Hearing aids come in a variety of shapes and sizes and are worn by people who have a partial hearing impairment. They are electro-acoustic mechanisms created to fit in or behind the wearer's ear. It is programmed to amplify and alternate sound for the wearer to suit their personal requirements.

Before the hearing aid there were devices such as the ear trumpet or ear horn, a passive funnel-like amplification cone designed to gather sound and direct it into the ear canal. So, trumpeters, look at your instrument before shoving it in your mouth.

A cochlear implant, or CI for short, is a surgically implanted device for profoundly deaf people, providing a sense of sound for them.

The CI has four parts. A microphone and speech processor filter and amplify noise, turning it into electrical signals. This sits behind the outer ear.

A transmitting coil held up by a magnet (about 10cm above the ear) transmits the signal to a stimulator, (beneath the skin against the skull bone), fuelling electrodes that activate the auditory nerve through a small hole drilled through the skull and cochlea, for processing by the brain as sound.

People who have a cochlear implant therefore have the right to say, "I'm part bionic lady", even if they are a guy.

The worst that could happen during this surgical operation is that the surgeon will accidentally cut through too much nerve and half your face will lose all muscle movement and you will look like, let's say, a cow pat without the stench and colouring.

So, "What's it like being deaf?" Everyone has a different story to tell, deaf or not, but we are not so different and there is no such thing as normal.

We are not "deaf and dumb", but there are some dumb people who just happen to be deaf.

To give you an honest answer about what it's like being deaf, I'm not really sure - but thank goodness I was born in the 1990s.

Jasmin Pakura, Year 13, Green Bay High School