Nina Livingstone’s Comedy Gig

Nina Livingstone:

So, I’m blind. Just heads up, I’m blind. I’m deaf, and I have hearing in one ear and a cochlear implant on my right side, which means I’ll probably only hear the right side of the audience instead of the left. Just heads up.

I want to say that when I had sight, lip reading was a challenge. Back in the ’60s… Way, way back, many thousands of years ago in the ’60s… Yeah. I remember there was… I had a lot of sight. And back then we didn’t have… This was with the infancy of technology. We didn’t have closed captioning, cochlear implants…

So, I remembered watching a program that was very difficult to lip read. I’ll give you an example. Mr. Ed., who was a… Most of you may not know… was a talking horse. And this horse… Well, it was very difficult to read his lips. It was very challenging, but… And my mother said, “You’ve been watching that every day. What is the deal with the horse?” And I said, “Well…” I said, “I love the show. I don’t know.” I didn’t understand.

But also I… moving forward, I had jobs when I was a young teenager. I worked in a fish shop and… a store. And I remember they told me with my sight started to dwindle, and I had a hereditary eye condition. So, I had tunnel vision, but I could still see straight ahead. I couldn’t see on the side, top, or bottom. I worked in this fish shop, working with my coworker, shifting between putting fish, wrapping it up in paper, announcing my number 75, no problem, I was going back and forth, my coworker and I worked really well.

And then they had this dish washing room where I’m bumping into her quite frequently, drop the fish, picked it up, wrapped it, “75,” and I got through that. And this was going on throughout the night, and I remember looking at my boss, “Can I talk to you for a minute?” And I said, “Me?” He said, “Yeah, you. Just for a minute.” So, I walked over to him, and he said, “We’re getting a lot of calls tonight.” And I said, “Oh, great.” He said, “No. No great.” He said, “It’s bad news.” He said, “You’re dropping fish, and you’re picking it up, and you’re wrapping it, and you’re calling the numbers.” And I said, “Well, I have my tunnel vision.” He said, “No, no. This isn’t about the sight.” He said, “It’s common sense. I think you’re missing that.” So, he said, “I think you should come back and you work in the back room as a dishwasher.” I said, “I don’t want to do that.” He said, “You’re going to have to. I’m sorry.” So, I worked in the back room. On demand, they wanted me back up front. I said, “Great. They gave me a new job. Reading numbers, that’s it.” “25,” that’s all I had to do.

So, fast forwarding after that, in the year 2000 I lost my sight completely. I had shut down in my sight and hearing. That’s like the government today. And in that year, what was interesting, despite not having any sight and hearing, the braille magazines… I’ve got to tell you, I learned braille, and what I figured out was there are three brailles. There are limited resources in braille magazines. We’re talking 20 years ago. And Popular Mechanics, National Geographic, and Playboy. And don’t even ask about pictures. And this was in braille, and I do remember 1972 when they had the braille magazines, I learned this because I remember a friend of mine, he was totally blind in the ’70s, and I said to him, as he was sitting in the waiting room reading it, and I said, “You are reading Playboy?” And he said to me, “Oh my gosh, how can you tell?” And I said, “Well, what you don’t know is on the cover…” because I had sight in the ’70s, I could see the black and white logo of a bunny on the cover. And he said, “Oh, I had no idea I’m reading this in the waiting room. I can’t believe…” So, he started to tear it off because the rest of it was in braille dots, of course. But he had no idea. But anyway…

So, when I found out that I was going to get a cochlear implant a year and a half later, I walk into my Mass Eye and Ear and was totally ecstatic. I was convelling, I couldn’t wait to have this hearing device that they were going to hook up for the first time. And the moment was about to come. We’re talking a year and a half silence, I’m reading all these books in braille, I miss the New York Times… Okay, get to the point. When they said to me, “We’re going to… You’ll be able to hear the sound, but we want to try one more thing.” They finger spelled into my hand, and they asked me, “What color microphone would you like?” Now, what kind of microphone do I want? A year and half and I cannot wait to hear. I want to hear sound, but I have to figure out what color do I want? “Yellow,” he said, “Blue, red…” I’m screaming in my head, and I want to say, “Just turn it on. Can’t you just get them…” So, I said, “How about…” I’m actually thinking of a color. I said, “Wait, this is [inaudible 00:05:44]. What am I doing?” So, they said, “Okay.” They said, “You know…” They hooked it up, and I could hear.

Okay, weeks later, my hearing… I’m hearing for the first time… This is great. Fabulous. And for the first time I make my first phone call. I call 411, I’m thinking, “Okay, after a year and a half, what do I do? Order pizza? Do I…” And I’m so excited. I’m thrilled. I pick up the phone and I said, “Hi, operator,” I said, “I have a cochlear implant. This is my first time calling. I’m so excited.” And she said, “I had a breast implant.” I said, “Oh, you must be excited. I bet you’re hearing really well.”

Huzzah! I’m done. Thank you.