News

October 23, 2009

Heeding the humor

Hearing-impaired comedienne, author entertains LIU conference while explaining how she learned to succeed.

By Mark Guydish mguydish@timesleader.com
Education Reporter
Mark Guydish on Facebook   |   @TLMarkGuydish on Twitter

WILKES-BARRE – Kathy Buckley, who has been hearing-impaired from birth, tells stories that make you laugh until you cry.

Like the time a lifeguard ran over her while she tanned on a beach (“talk about not living up to your job description”) and doctors said she would never walk. (“I didn’t hear them, so I got up and left.”) She admits to five suicide attempts before graduating high school, then quips, “OK, there are some things I will never be successful at.”

Well, except for being a comedienne, author, actress and inspirational speaker to groups like the hundreds gathered Thursday at the annual Luzerne Intermediate Unit hearing-impaired conference dubbed, “Hear Now and Forever.” It was held at the Genetti Hotel & Convention Center, Wilkes-Barre.

Buckley, the guest speaker, opened with jokes fine-tuned by her experiences. She recounted a party where they gave out gag gifts: A Rubik’s Cube to a blind man, a Twister game to an amputee. But she segued into personal tragedies, from her first years of education in a school for the mentally retarded because no one knew she was deaf, to the suicide attempts, to the beach accident and a battle with cancer.

When her impairment was first diagnosed, she said she received a bulky hearing aid that proved ineffective.

“All I could hear was my corduroys, and it took me two weeks to figure that one out.” When she finally received devices that worked, she was so stunned by the rustle of bags being filled at a grocery checkout that she ran home and started crumpling every kind of paper she could find.

“When I got to the Kleenex, it was like ‘Come on, baby, talk to me!’ ”

Buckley recounted meeting a quadriplegic woman who, she assumed, could accomplish almost nothing. Then she learned the woman had written two best-selling books using a machine that let her select letters on a screen by blinking her eyes.

“The moral of the story is, please don’t pass judgment upon anyone that you wouldn’t pass on yourself.”

The constant struggles left her with a defeatist attitude. Her big dream was to become a nurse, but she convinced herself she couldn’t succeed. “I was afraid if a patient asked for a bed pan I’d give them a Percodan – I’d be a popular nurse.”

She did ultimately get certified as a massage therapist, and cried as she recounted how much it meant to finally get “that white lab coat with my name on it.”

It proved the importance of not presuming limitations, on yourself or others.

“It’s not about hearing,” she told the crowd. “It’s about understanding who you are.”

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