99 New: Tuned In

I was on Wisconsin Public Radio this morning.

Along with a local county supervisor, I was on a half-hour segment of The Morning Show, part of the Ideas Network. The topic was menstrual equity. I was asked to participate because of my work with Time of the Month Club. The segment is here.

The news isn’t that I was on the radio. The news is that I agreed to be on the radio in the first place. I said yes because I figured I could sit in a studio with a host and read his or her lips if my hearing crapped out on me, which it never does anymore but it did for years so I’m always dreading it. And then my friend, the county supervisor, would be there as well and could cue me if I missed something. So going on the radio seemed like a safe thing to do plus a wise one. If I want to promote women’s right to have access to decent menstrual supplies, this would be an important way to do it.

It was 7:15 am when I arrived and the radio station’s offices were empty with just a single person, a young friendly-looking woman, sitting at the front desk. She led me to the studio and handed me headphones.

“There’s a host, right? I asked her.

“There is but he’s in Superior.” We were in Milwaukee. Superior is a town on Lake Superior that borders Duluth, oh say, about 350 miles away. So the host was going to be remote, as they say, extremely remote. No reading his lips.

“And the county supervisor? She was going to be here.”

“She decided last night to call in on the phone.”

And so my plan to have someone to take care of Deaf Jan evaporated.

Through the headphones I listened to what seemed like whispers, the host was wrapping up the segment before ours. Little teeny panic started to sprout. Everything about this interview would have to happen through my ears, through my cochlear implant in one ear and my hearing aid in the other and the headphones over everything. Maybe the young woman could write the questions down for me. Insane. Quit being such a fucking head case, Jan. Ask her to turn up the volume, for Christ’s sake. You come in to talk about menstrual equity and removing barriers for women and then sit here all baffled and defenseless without a designated ‘helper.’ Jesus.

So we adjusted and readjusted the volume until it seemed loud but right. She got up to leave but I asked her to stay, you know, just in case, and she sat listening and smiling at me for the next half-hour so I ended up having a tender but a modest one, more like a security blanket so I wasn’t ashamed of myself, I just considered it good disability coping.

I did the interview with the headphones and all my other fantastically expensive electronic hearing gear without missing anything that anyone said, even the three women who called in with questions. And when it was done I felt like a million bucks. I walked out of the building, down the street to my car, and smiled at the homeless guy walking toward me. He was smiled back, a gummy smile with just a single tooth in front. He almost seemed to laugh. “You look like you’re having a good morning,” he said. And I was, he was right.

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