Plays by Robert Bowie, Jr…

Everybody knows there’s nothing worse than a deaf extrovert — except for the deaf extrovert or, worse, perhaps a person trying to learn how to be a deaf extrovert.

This spring, Susan and I went to the London Book Fair for a week, and to Paris for three weeks in late April.

I am an introvert but I have had to learn to be a deaf extrovert.

Susan and I were invited to a large, loud, and formal restaurant party, where I was seated next to a woman who I could not hear at all. I decided I would ask her questions so she would not ask me questions that I couldn’t hear or answer.

I asked her questions all night and after dinner was over, she went over to my wife and exclaimed to her that I was the most interesting dinner partner she’d ever had.

Such challenges are a gift to those who are growing old and deaf. Everything becomes redefined. It’s just like when you were a kid and looking through spy glasses to bring the distance up close but then you turn it around and everything looks far away.

London was new for us and the book sale hustle brought me back to my work ethic of years ago, but Paris is familiar to us because we have gone each spring for several years.

What is fun is these changes are making me understand the contrast and that contrast has always been there as a metaphor for memory or as familiarity. It’s a little like turning that spy glass around and then thinking about the process of change rather than instantly normalizing it.

The contrast has always been there. But nobody notices because we change everything into normal immediately in our daily lives. We take this contrast and this friction in our life for granted.

The London Book Fair was a predatory hustle. I was provided 30 copies of my book, The Older You Get the Shorter Your Stories Should Be, by my sponsor. I was instructed to selectively give them away to people who visited their booth to promote the book. I was surrounded by posters about the book, which added to the hustle.

I had to learn how to adapt so that I would get the most effective reaction to my gift of a book. I quickly learned to single out my target, interview them and get their card before I gave them my book. Nobody likes a deaf introvert, so you have to get them talking fast about themselves and their interests in books like yours. If I got their card, I could exchange emails with them later without needing to hear them.

In Paris, Susan and I decided to master the Metro. I don’t speak French, so it was easy being deaf. Susan does speak some French so she would break the ice and then, because everyone in Paris can speak English, I would be back to the struggle. The level of concentration needed when you can’t fully hear is exhausting.

But the peace of pure silence once the hearing aids come out is its own reward.