Growing up with a deaf father, I find deaf jokes pretty funny. I know that I talk pretty loudly. I thought it was because my father, the actor, had taught me to project. It wasn’t until Curtis explained it to someone else that I realized that I talk loudly because I grew up with a nearly deaf father.

When I was baby, my father actually was deaf. He couldn’t tell you to this day whether I cried a lot or not. He couldn’t hear me. He had a surgery to replace the bones in his ear when I was 2-ish. That got his hearing up to ‘Huh?’ level, where he misheard most of what you said, asked you to repeat a lot, and often just gave up and chose to misunderstand.

Now Daddy wears hearing aids. Not that he wears them consistently, or has them in working order. I can barely tell the difference in our interactions. Of course, I involuntarily speak louder when he’s around.

Friday night, Curtis and I went out to dinner with our friends Carol and Linwood. Linwood wears hearing aids, and under the best of circumstances, leans in to hear you better during conversation. We went to a piano bar. It had sounded like such a good idea. Almost like that mythical jazz club we’ve been dreaming of.

Except that it was really loud at the piano bar. I mean, uncomfortably loud–almost like at a dance-club loud, where you must speak directly in someone’s ear in order to be heard. I mentioned something about my surprise at the decibel level, and Linwood asked, “Is it loud in here?”

Curtis, not used to ‘projecting,’ gave himself a sore throat by evening’s end. Carol spoke in her husband’s ear throughout the evening, and she and I leaned in close for conversation.

My food was not at all what I’d ordered. Despite my projection at ordering time, the waitress didn’t have a clue. We couldn’t compete with Elton John et. al.

But the company was great, and the entertainment was interesting. It had that one element that makes me laugh out loud for joy–people spontaneously breaking out in song.

I thought about that today at church–another place where normal people start singing all around you. It can get really loud in there, too. But the volume was just right today, and the joy was infectious.

My ears have almost recovered.