The rules and the stakes. The salad.

Filming on the eventual oscah winner (we’re still working on the title) began yesterday afternoon as Ben, Sam and I sat down and compared smiling-and-nodding techniques. Ben introduced the three time rule: if he, for some reason, doesn’t understand what someone is saying after the third time asking, then he’s just going to pretend he does. What if she’s cute? Sam wondered. Becky asked each of us how much has deafness affected us, and we all agreed between 42 and 63 percent, more if we have a cold. Ben shared that he never takes his aids out, even on the subway or the street. I professed surprise at this – for me, that much noise would be excruciatingly painful. For the last three years, I’ve never had my aids in unless I absolutely need to. Sam’s aids usage depends on whether she’s cute.

Then we raised a proverbial glass to the memory of the sainted Adele, our audiologist/speech teacher/auxiliary mother who taught us all to hear and to speak, the key tools to living the hearing impaired person’s blessed life of borderline isolation. Wait, that sounds kinda bitter. Had my parents not found Adele, there’s no doubt all of our lives would have been extremely different. That’s probably not a good thing as we’ve all had full and interesting lives and Ben has recently become engaged to a lovely woman and Sam has recently been enslaved by one. (Bro, my blog.)

This brings up the grass is greener rule: sometimes it seems like it would be nice to sign all the time and not to do the work of listening and lip-reading. Read a blog last night by a woman named Meryl, who got implanted two years ago and in it she talks eloquently of lipreading fatigue. (I also read about a Deaf Rock Band. The link is here - I love their name. Becky, they definitely have to score the movie). I also read a few articles about a deaf former Miss America who was implanted at John Hopkins (where Sam is going for his operation) a few years back. Both of them say the surgery is the easy part.

Getting a hole drilled in your skill is the easy part? Dang.

Two more days till surgery for me, ten for Sam, who had his operation postponed for a week. Feeling waves of pre-surgery jitters and it’s too hot to drink Scotch. I try and keep perspective by remembering my long-term prognosis. If the implant works great -- death. And if it fails – also death. So either way, I got that going for me. Though I guess if you do make enough money you could have your head cut off and stored upside down in a freezer in Phoenix. Then you could be brought back to life 200 years from now, into a cyborg body made from cochlear, muscular, and penile implants. But what if GW Bush is brought back to life at the same time? No one thinks these things through.

Pre-op is tomorrow at one. Mets have won three straight. They make really good salmon salad at Zabar’s.