So did everyone else back then, and now, you effin loser.
Yeah, damn, I tried; anything to get out of going to college.
Of course, the U.S. Army recruiter in central Nebraska knew that I was born absent of ears, but because he was a nice guy, indulged me. He sympathized with my desire to be in the real world rather than in college, and because I insisted, he arranged for a military physical for me.
Since I had no bodily afflictions other than no ears, I thought all the good stuff would override this one bad thing.
I got the examination, and breezed through it until I was shut up in a small dark room with no light.
The hearing examination.
That stymied me; usually, when one has this sort of hearing examination, there's a window, and one can "read" the body movements and body language of the person outside. But here, all was utter darkness.
So I had to guess, and I didn't guess very well.
I was really put out about it, and wrote a letter to the then Secretary of Defense, Richard Cheney, protesting that the military should have affirmative action. My argument was that psychological and other professional evaluation shows that the deaf tend to be great "decoders" of things, an unusually good aptitude at it, and surely the military could use my own skills in a telegraph room or something.
I got a really nice
hand-written letter back from Richard Cheney, after which I was his fan for life.
Of course, with the passage of time, one ostensibly gains wisdom, and nowadays I don't think it would've been a good idea--not not a good idea for me, but a definite encumbrance for those who would've had to work with me. One can facilitate, but one can also hinder.
But at the time I was a teenager, and no place to go other than college, the parents being dead and all that. I did not want to go to college, but I ended up there anyway.
Such is life; one accepts, one adapts, one moves on.....
