There are certain things that hearing people take for granted. One of them is the fact that we can gauge the volume of our farts and distribute them socially appropriately. Deaf people won’t know farts make a noise until someone tells them, which is a task that came down to a teacher.
The teacher shared her hilarious conversation with a first-grade class involving a deaf kid. The child was surprised to see that a few of their classmates were staring at them. Being deaf, there will often be times when something audible happens, and they need to have it explained.
“Why are they looking at me?” the kid asked his teacher. “Because they heard you fart,” she explained. This was news to the deaf kid, though, and their world immediately changed. “Whhhhat do you mean?” they asked. “Hearing people can hear farts,” she told them.
This revelation obviously echoed back throughout their memory. All the thousands of farts in public, all the moments they thought they could slip one out. “Wait, they can hear all farts?” the kid asked. So she had to break it down for the little person. No, of course not all, but some, yes.
What followed was a conversation only a first-grade teacher would ever have. In a mature and understanding way, she had to break down which farts are audible and which aren’t to a deaf person. It’s all in the cheek feel, apparently. Of course, they needed to know which ones they could let slip and which ones to keep locked up.
“You know how sometimes you can feel your butt move when you fart? They can hear it. But if your butt doesn’t move, it’s more likely they didn’t hear it,” she explained as best she could. It’s something people with hearing learn by trial and error, but it’s gonna be a trick for a deaf kid.
Stop Listening!
As an immediate reaction, the deaf kid demanded that the people with hearing stop listening to his farts, but it doesn’t work like that, his teacher explained. It was just something people heard. So, instead, the kid decided that he would stop farting altogether,
To discourage the unhealthy practice of holding it in, she explained that everyone farts. His dad, his mum, his classmates, and even herself. Of course, this discussion of farting had the rest of the class in stitches.
It’s a learning curve for the deaf students, but a very valuable one.