What's That Pig Outdoors? Quotes

“Blindness is a handicap of mobility, deafness one of communication. Terrible as is loss of vision, it does not distance the blind from the sighted the way loss of hearing separates the deaf from the normal.”
― Henry Kisor, What's That Pig Outdoors?: A Memoir of Deafness

“Even for a child, the major component of lipreading is guesswork. It’s often said that only 30 to 40 percent of lipreading is actual “reading” of each word; the rest is “context guessing” to fill in the gaps between the words that are actually understood.”
― Henry Kisor, What's That Pig Outdoors?: A Memoir of Deafness

“The average deaf person has the peripheral vision of a fish-eye lens, almost 180 degrees, and spots the tiniest movement within this range long before the average hearing person can do so. In practical terms this superior visual acuity has led some automobile insurance companies in recent years to give sizable rate discounts to deaf drivers.”
― Henry Kisor, What's That Pig Outdoors?: A Memoir of Deafness

“The notion of a deaf lifeguard is not as farfetched as it might seem. Bathers in trouble rarely, if ever, cry for help. They can’t. They’re choking on water and can’t get out a sound. They either thrash madly or disappear quietly under the surface. That’s why lifeguards are trained to scan the surface with their eyes. They’re not listening for cries of “Help!” but watching for abnormal behavior in the water. When actual rescues aren’t being conducted, lifeguarding is almost entirely a visual task. As a group, I would later learn, the deaf are measurably superior to the hearing in the discernment of visual cues and the speed of responses to them. There’s nothing superhuman about this phenomenon.”
― Henry Kisor, What's That Pig Outdoors?: A Memoir of Deafness