Viewing page 14 of 19

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Transcription: [00:34:04]
{SPEAKER name="William Ennis/John Ennis (interpreter)"}
I guess as most of you know, there's three reasons why people become deaf. Illness, accident and sometimes hereditary.

[00:34:17]
Maybe you'd be interested to know that some of the causes of deafness listed in old annuals of school reports a long time ago. First you must remember a long time ago, you did not have many doctors, so often the parents themselves determined how the child became deaf.

[00:34:38]
And when they took the child to the school they would say, the administrator would put down that must be it. Some are real strange, let me share some of them with you.

[00:34:49]
Some of the causes that I've found in these old annual reports were, black tongue caused the deafness, sore eyes, sprains, didn't say where. Maybe they sprained an ankle and became deaf. I don't know.

[00:35:08]
Cold water, fright, thunder. Thunder it's funny but I've found real cases of a deaf man who really did become deaf from thunder. He was standing on the family porch and lightning came down and went out like she did and after a long coma found out he was deaf.

[00:35:33]
But this is the best of all. Mother's conduct, [LAUGHTER] mother's conduct, behavior. Others swallowing tobacco causes deafness.

[00:35:49]
Where my parents caught me smoking they said I would never grow and sure enough I was a runt in my class. And I thought, boy my mum was right, then later I finally begin to grow.

[00:36:05]
Sand, that's a story in itself. The story is about parents talking about a little boy, Johnny. They said, that Johnny, every time we tell him something it goes in one ear out the other.

[00:36:20]
The parents you know what they were, as parents you know what they're talking about I'm sure, but anyway Johnny's brother and sister overheard that.

[00:36:28]
Looked at each other, said "really?" So when their parents, they said "hey Johnny come on, come here," and they took Johnny down to the creek, found some very fine sand. Said "come here Johnny put your head down."

[00:36:42]
Johnny put his head down and started pouring the sand and they looked and nothing came, was coming through, their parents must have lied they thought huh