Can't Hear When You
Scream
I have
never done well with people yelling or screaming at me. I tend to
shut down. When someone starts doing that my mind wanders, I stop
listening, and all I want to do is make the noise stop. Instead of
listening, I tend to look at the person and wonder just what is going
on with them. I don't even like it when someone is talking loud.
Does this have something to do with my being a rather low volume
talker myself? I really don't know.
My Mom
tells me I was a late talker. Late enough, according to Dr Spock,
the baby care guru from the 40's, that my Mom and Dad took me to the
Doctor to find out what was wrong with me. The Doctor tested my
hearing and finding nothing wrong started asking my parents some
things. He finally told them that I was not talking yet because I
had no reason to talk. I evidently had figured out that all I had to
do was point and make some noise, point and grunt. My parents would
get things until they found what I wanted. I was getting what I
wanted without talking. He suggested that they stop this practice
and force me to say what I wanted. Not sure of the exact method but
at least according to them it worked. I started talking and still do
so today which some may say was one of my parent's bigger mistakes.
So
screaming and yelling? My parents were not screamers, rarely heard
them raise their voice. Don't get me wrong, they got angry with us
and would raise their voice some but not to the point of screaming.
My sister did some but that was often due to me intentionally
aggravating her. So that was really the sound of victory, like the
cheering at a sporting event and I didn't listen to her anyway. I
did have a few adults yell at me when I was growing up but they were
just crazy adults, at least that's what I thought. Someone to
ignore. When I got old enough to get a job (high school), I never
really had a boss who yelled at me. I was always a hard worker and
came across as a responsible honest kid. I was usually the 1st
kid they put in charge of something.
Welcome
to military service. This was quite eye-opening for me. Even just
the pre-induction physical seemed bizarre to me. You are stripped
down to your underwear with something like 100 other guys. They
either talked very loud at us or yelled depending on the situation.
If the yelling did not get us to respond in a fashion that they
liked, they would then threaten us. Granted, we were not the most
highly motivated group. After all almost all of us were not there
voluntarily, would have rather been somewhere else, and probably
would have been thrilled to fail the physical. With all the yelling
I found it difficult to follow what they were trying to tell us.
They were not too fond of questions or being asked to repeat things.
Hence, you kind of followed the group and did your best. It became
clear that what they wanted us to do was get to the next station and
do whatever task or take whatever test they were throwing at you and
then move on quickly. The results did not seem to matter. For
instance I did not understand the instructions for the hearing test
and since questions were not appreciated, I guessed at what they
said. Well, I guessed wrong and ended up doing the opposite of what
I was supposed to do. The results were I had no hearing. They told
me to move on. I later failed the depth-perception test. That did
not seem to be a problem either. However, the pee in the cup task
did not go so well because I did not have to pee and standing in a
room shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of other guys with their dicks
out aiming a a little cup, and military personnel walking around
yelling and threatening you somehow did little to motivate me to have
to pee. The threat was if you did not pee now they were going to
stick a big needle into your privates, in an area where you would not
want it. Well after a few frustrating minutes I was fed up and just
wanted them to stop yelling at me so I volunteered to do the needle
thing. I figured while it sounded terrible how bad could it be if
this was what they did to the guys who didn't pee timely. It
obviously didn't kill or injure you. So I just decided to do it and
get it over with so I could get out of there. Well they pulled me
over to a corner and quietly told me “Kid, there is no needle. No
one ever volunteers to have it done to them because what guy in his
right mind would go for that. What's wrong with you?” I was going
to explain that I was left-handed and therefore actually in my right
mind but decided this is likely a situation where the “less is
more” rule applies. They told me not to tell anyone and just come
back later when I was ready to pee. For now just move on to the next
station.
The
last step was filling out a questionnaire. It asked all kinds of
questions about things like your habits (particularly drugs), your
medical history, and your political affiliations. They told us in no
uncertain terms to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth. One of the questions was “Do you know anyone or have
you ever known anyone who said they were a communist, or a member of
the communist party?”. Hmm, when I went to my high school's
senior prom, my girlfriend and I double dated with a friend of hers.
Her date was a college guy and he talked about Karl Marx's writings
and said he was a communist. That was a couple of years ago and I
never saw him again. With all that emphasis on being truthful, I
felt obligated to answer in the affirmative to the communist
question. I was directed to a bench where I was to wait for some
private one on one time with one of the military dudes. After a few
minutes wait, I was taken to a private room. I was then interrogated
with questions about who the person was, his ethnicity, his parents
names, where he lived, his friends, his activities, his college, etc.
The questions went on for a while and some were repeated a few
times. The guy seemed a little frustrated with me because I did not
know any of the answers. I did not even remember the “commie's”
name. I was eventually released back out to the group. Good news, I
now had to pee! Turns out a little friendly one on one discussion on
“communists I have known” works better than that needle to your
privates threat, at least for me...
Sometime
during basic training I was informed that my records showed that I
had no hearing. They requested, in the normal military fashion,
which really is a form of demanding, that I take another hearing
test. Looking back this might have been a good time to try the old
point and grunt technique. I took the test and what do you know? My
hearing returned. I guess they stopped screaming at me, well, at
least for the moment anyway...
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