Welcome to the new year! nothing better than family and games to celebrate! In this holiday season podcast, Hearing Loss LIVE! talks about their favorite family games.
We share some that make hearing loss easy and enjoyable and some that no longer work fur hearing loss. And above all else share some laughter with you this New Year's.
Where ever you are for 2022, whatever your plans, join us here at Hearing Loss LIVE! as we grow our business to include once a month free online chat with other hearing loss individual or for one of your business oriented hearing loss sensitivity trainings.
Need help or know a business that needs a training class? Let us know here at info@hearinglosslive.com.
Welcome to the new year! nothing better than family and games to celebrate! In this holiday season podcast, Hearing Loss LIVE! talks about their favorite family games.
We share some that make hearing loss easy and enjoyable and some that no longer work fur hearing loss. And above all else share some laughter with you this New Year's.
Where ever you are for 2022, whatever your plans, join us here at Hearing Loss LIVE! as we grow our business to include once a month free online chat with other hearing loss individual or for one of your business oriented hearing loss sensitivity trainings.
Need help or know a business that needs a training class? Let us know here at info@hearinglosslive.com.
Hearing Loss LIVE! Talks Games.
Julia: Hi, welcome to Hearing Loss LIVE! Today we're going to talk to you about playing games and cards. It's the new year. New you. New me. Who knows? Anyways, we have some gaming moms here who are going to talk about all the games they like to play with their kids. You'll find out my blog, I'm not much of a gamer. Well, I'm a gamer with myself, mostly in it was one of those shower things-- that didn't come across, right. But what I mean by that, growing up my mom always got me games I could play with myself. So like Atari-- did it again, didn't I? Atari or Pac Man. Or, you know, I had cards, I played solitaire a lot. I found out as an adult, it's because my mom hates games. She hates playing them. She didn't want anything to do with them. So it wasn't just me. My, my brother and sister had some games that they played together. But they were much younger than I was. So when they were old enough to play games at that point, I lived in California. But as adults, my kids come over and we play a lot of gin rummy. We played a lot of cards with grandma, when we moved back from California and my my cousin's had introduced a game called demon. It's solitaire game. Where your goal is to build as many decks in the middle part. So everybody has their own deck of cards. So you're building the you know, like the hearts, the clubs, and all of that in order in the middle, while you get rid of a pile of 13 cards. And the person who, who yells demon, is the is not the winner, but that means the game ends. Whoever wins the round is how many people get cards in the middle, how many you get into the decks that you're building. So my cousin would hold one card all the time. And just keep on going? It'd be like, dude, put the card in. Nope, not done yet. So that he would win every round, and let somebody else call demon. [laughing] My grandma loved the game. And so we play it every time we got together. And then a couple weeks back, my son was over. And he's like, let's play demon. And let's, let's show Sophia demon. And we got it out. And it was kind of, it's one of those games, you really need a bunch of people because that's when it gets really intense. And you're fighting to get your cards in the middle and you say, I'm sorry, but you're not really sorry, while you're getting the card on before somebody else. And with three of us, it was like, oh, demon. Five cards each. [laughing] We, we went back to gin. And then the other day, we tried to catch a killer. It's, you know, those who-done-it. I thought, oh, that's so fun. Right? I love CSI. I love all those things. Well, they send you basic, I mean, okay, we're gonna rip off the idea and call it something else. Because basically, they send you a bunch of made up articles for clues that you have to read all this paperwork. So our, the whole tables full of like news clippings and journal writings? And I'm like, What is this? And there's this you got to figure out a code because the special clues are locked in this container. At one point I gave up on the code and I ripped it open. I rip the zipper off. To get the clues out. We got the clues out. Sophie and I read it and it's like it's the wife. This is dumb. And we went back to playing gin. So we'll stick with gin [laughing]. That's about it for our family unless it's on a computer and it's Solitaire. I don't know that I play it. Chelle?
Chelle: we are going to try to meet up as a family this Saturday. And on Google meet and play Cards Against Humanity online. There's actually an online version you can get. And my son starts it. He's He's the knowledgeable one. The one in Arizona. And he starts it and he invites us in. And we go in and we give ourselves names. And sometimes the kids are funny. I usually just stick with mom. And we can play Cards Against Humanity with each other online. And for me with Google Meet, it's important because it has the captions. But the captions are often so funny, we end up laughing just as hard with the captions as we do with the game. So Google Meet because of the pandemic and everything closing down and everybody staying home and the family you know, we're like so big on cards that we found a way. I introduced Google Meet to them. They introduced online Cards Against Humanity's game to me.
Michele: We've always been a big game playing family, I can remember as a kid, my mom and her siblings sitting around my aunt's kitchen table playing Tripoli and canasta and just wanting to be in on it. And then the cousins would go off and play games. And I was the youngest cousin at the time. And my sister and I were the only girls. So you can imagine what standing I had in someone choosing me as a partner. [laughing] Nil. So I always loved games. And, you know, we played Monopoly and all those kinds of things coming up. My family, my immediate family, we play a lot of games. My husband and I probably play cribbage almost every day, we play three games a day. Best of three. And that's a pretty easy game, to keep playing with hearing loss. We also like to play dominoes, Mexican Train dominoes. And that's a great game, even the kids, even at a really young age would play with all the adults. And you know, those games that still pretty easy to follow everything. I think when playing games, the thing that I'm most challenged by is the cross talk, you know, you kind of sometimes can't keep on top of that. And it always includes a lot of laughter, joking and those things are so hard to follow. And, you know, you don't always want one of your family members to be kind of interpreting for you. It really changes the dynamic of it. And I can sit there and enjoy what's happening. But there are times when I feel really left out, and I kind of have to say, okay, somebody else come in and play the next game, I'm gonna go do this, and then I find something busy to do. But most of the time, it's still really enjoyable just to see my whole family sitting there having a great time. One thing, one game I can't play very well anymore is any kind of charades game like gestures, or I can't remember some of the names of those charade like games. We also like to play cranium and you get a task in cranium. And, and it might be something that has an an audio element to it. Like humdingers, you have to hum a song, and your your teammates have to guess it. Well, of course, I can't hear humming anymore, so I'm worthless on that. And that's a big disappointment. Wanting to hear those things that used to be able to hear that you no longer can. The charade type games, so much of of you're guessing what it is comes from the other people guessing you kind of build off of what they're guessing and I can no longer do that. I can't even see everybody. So I find if there's like a charades game, I'm off in a corner by myself trying to keep the group guessing and the person making the gestures in the same field of vision. And you know, I can't guess before anyone else anymore because my hearing loss kind of took me out of that. And so those kinds of games are really hard to continue. And we don't play those games much anymore, but we just love games and from the time my granddaughter was born, we were playing games. She wanted to pull our pegs out of the cribbage board. And so I got a giant cribbage board with really big pegs that she couldn't swallow and she would sit in play with that game while we played cribbage. And I've always carried a Go Fish deck in my purse. We always play Go Fish. We still do. And, but she plays grown up games with us now. She's nine and you know the the Mexican Train dominoes and cribbage are great for kids to increase their math skills. Because you have to add you know at the end of dominoes, you have to add up your dominoes left in your hand and that. And it's a great exercise for them to increase thier math, math skills. Even I get to increase my math skills. Chelle knows that. We've played when I visit her and I usually, well, I think last time she beat me really bad. But I think the first time I visited or we played, I won pretty bad. And so I have pictures I was gonna share on the blog about that. But I thought that's kind of egotistical. [laughing] Chelle: Yes, I love cribbage. And Michele is one of the few people I can play with. And so she comes down, and hopefully soon I can go visit her too but there's always a cribbage board on hand. And she gave me a beautiful one from driftwood or no wood in the hood. [laughing] Michele: It's Wood from the Hood, and actually, when people have trees taken down, or the county cuts limbs down, they donate the wood, and this company uses the wood from those trees and makes things like cribbage boards and other things. So it's, it's good for the planet that the reusing and recycling.
Chelle: Yeah, so, so we do get into some good games. And yeah, Michele will gloat when she wins. [laughing] But I have another hard of hearing friend who also plays cribbage. And sometimes when I get together with her we'll also play. But it's really hard to find the people to play cribbage. And it is an easy, hard of hearing game, because it's just keeping track of counting. So it's easy. What was going to say? Oh, my grandson, we gave him Kids Against Maturity, a card game. And when we broke out, last time, we broke out Cards Against Humanity, he said, he's 11, "I'm out, this is not age appropriate." [laughing] So I went and I looked for a game for him that was age appropriate. And we were looking at that last week and going. I don't know that this is really age appropriate. There are some really sly innuendos in there for adult humor, but but the kids love it. So that's all that counts. The other thing is Michele was talking about cross talk with the family, and it is hard to keep up especially when the kids go fast, because they all hear. And they're going back and forth. So I think I decide whether I'm in or out. So I might be playing the game and they're talking. And I'm like, I'm not interested in this. So I'm going to phase out of this conversation and just play the game. Other times, I have enough hearing that I'll hear something. I'm like, oh, wait a minute, what was that? And then they will come back and tell me. Always one of them. I mean, I'm so lucky in that all three kids and their significant other will repeat, as needed. So it's hard to-- it's a lot of work to keep up with the class conversation. So decide whether you're in or out.
Julia: My grandparents were bridge players from Forever. I remember even as a kid them trying to teach me bridge and I could never get the grasp of it for whatever reason. But in later years when grandma's hearing loss was was pretty significant. She, She hated going to bridge because she couldn't hear anything. That's when I introduced her to the Pocket Talker. And, and that helped. She loved having the Pocket Talker to keep going to bridge. But unfortunately, she would forget to charge it or she couldn't figure out the batteries. So the sooner you can introduce them to a pocket talker if they enjoy that cross talk type of situation to get comfortable with she really did it did help her for a while with that. I think that's why she liked demon so much. She didn't have to talk there. You know, we had cross talk, we had cross talk going but she didn't have to pay attention. She could just pay attention to the cards. I didn't think about that before. But I bet I bet that was a reason why she loved that game so much.
Michele" I've never played bridge, but I know it's complicated. And I just heard from a bridge player who said as they were playing bridge, one of the other participants talked to this person who has hearing loss very loudly, and then laughed and said, "Can you hear me now?' And the person was kind of taken aback and they didn't know how to reply and so they just kind of left alonE and went on. And then the next day they realized how angry and hurt, hurt They were by it. And you know a lot of people, especially those you don't know well, maybe that weird Uncle, you know, somebody, you're not around a lot, they'll try to make a joke. And maybe that's them trying to disarm the tension around the person with hearing loss. But those kinds of jokes aren't funny. And, you know, I try my best to respond right then not angrily. But to make a point. And say things like, well, you know, talking louder, doesn't hold me here, because it's more clarity problem than it is a volume problem. So I think the better way to deal at the time is probably to use it as a teaching moment. And you know, just let people know what hearing loss is actually like, and actually tell them what's helpful, instruct them on how to help you understand better. So th--those things are hard to deal with. And, you know, you probably are gonna do a different reaction depending on every situation. because it really depends on the context and who it's coming from. But yeah, it's hard. Well, you still always played Balderdash, where you get a word and definition. And the dasher, who's the person who is reading the cards, everybody else has to write down a definition that they think that that word means and then the dasher reads all of those. So you're reading maybe six definitions, and then you vote on what you think the actual definition is. I have a hard time following that game. Because you know if that gives me the slips of paper that the definition is written on. I know who who wrote it because I recognize handwriting. So I almost can't play balderdash anymore. And there are a couple of other games that we don't play much anymore that we used to play a lot.
There's two thoughts here competing in my mind, let me see. When is that? Julia mentioned that her grandma might have liked demon Solitaire, because there was no time for conversation in between. And I just recently found another game like that that I love. And it's called tinzy. And it's tin dice. And we we all roll'em and then we try to get all ones and then when the person has all their ones, you just roll as fast as you can keep rolling until you get them all ones and then you say tinzy and sometimes we yell Yatzee, whatever, it works. And my grandsons even play with that. But the thing with this game is that it goes so fast nobody's talking in between. We are just rolling as fast as we can. And we played in the hot kitchen for Thanksgiving. And it was so intense that we're all like almost dripping sweat. And we're opening windows to cool off and, and so that's another no hearing kind of game to play that a lot of fun. And the other thing that Michele mentioned about the guy playing bridge, and the guy talking really loud, saying can you hear me now? I've never been very patient with that. I guess Michele is a little bit better than me. [laughing] Man when something like that pops up for me, I pretty much I know I wouldn't say really angry, but they know I'm not happy when I reply because it's not nice. I've had people in health fairs come up to me when I was working for the Sanderson Center of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing here in Utah. And I would go to these health fairs and senior centers where people would walk up and look at the name and go, "huh, huh?" Oh, oh I hate that. So, because I was working, I had to be more polite than normal. So I went to my SayWhatClub email list, and I asked all the friends what they thought anyway, rambling and rambling. So, so I went there and they told me, everybody pitched in and I finally came up with a line. So when people started doing that to me, "huh, huh?" I would go, "You know hearing loss is no laughing matter. A lot of people have this and it's not fun anymore and besides Do you know how often I've heard that in my life? It's just not funny anymore." Most of them are like, you know, "Oh, sorry." I think they don't realize how offensive it is. So when you let them know, I'm sure they don't say it again.
Julia: I've let my husband know that that's not okay to do and he still does it. So maybe they stopped doing it. He thinks it's funny. And I had explained to him a couple times, I don't think you should do that. people really don't find it funny. And of course, he also thinks he's funny. So I'll leave it there. Okay, what was your second thought? You had a second thought didn't you, Chelle, or did you say both of them, and I missed it?
Chelle: I said both. But I can talk more because I do love games. [laughing] So yeah, you talking about earlier, years of games. And I grew up with my parents playing cribbage and watching them and I learned cribbage early. But that's the only game they played and then they never played again after they moved. I caught the game fever thing big and we would play Uno at nights as a teenager. Uno party night at my house only you know, it wasn't. It was a teenager, so no alcohol or anything. But we had to go on from midnight to one o'clock. And I remember my best friend, his mom would call him at our house and go are you coming home tonight? Oh, yeah, yeah I'm coming home. [laughing] That was always fun. And a challenge in a way because I convinced everybody I cheated all the time. So they were watching me super close, which I really wasn't. I just love to tease people, and my friend, he wore glasses, and he'd hold the cards up close and I go, "I can see the color of the card in your glasses. I know what you're calling next." He wouldn't wear glasses anymore. [laughing] It really wasn't true. It was just me, teasing them and them thinking I was cheating. Or I would be looking in the sliding glass door behind them at night with a reflection and telling them I could see the numbers and the colors. Which really wasn't all the way true either. Made them all paranoid. It was so much fun.
Michele: You know, I think my immediate family, they're all pretty good to try to help me stay on top of what's going on when we're playing a game. Trivial pursuit was challenging, which I can still play Trivial Pursuit and I love Trivial Pursuit. But what used to really make me feel bad was I need to read the card for myself. Oh, you know, I might have lipread you, I might not have. So pass me the card when you read it. So everybody knows to do that. But sometimes they would wait until after they all started talking about the question to hand me the card and so I'm lost on what the subject is that they're talking about? So I had to start asking pass me the card right away. Because I I want to know what the question is before we start discussing it with our partners or whatever. So that that was kind of a challenge, but they do pretty good job of keeping me included.
Julia: Just had a thought. And I don't know if it's been so long since I played any Trivial Pursuit. The kids and I sometimes play Cards Against Humanity, which is hard when there's only three of us. So, but it always gets quite interesting. Mostly we do it out of humor, we've been trying to get my step mom and dad to do it on a on a Google meet or resume. I actually sent them matching cards so we could, we could get together and do it hopefully, over the holidays. But here's a question. Could you if and I don't know if it would work or not in Trivial Pursuit or even Cards Against Humanity. Could you always be the one to read the card to everybody else in the room? Instead of taking turns would that work? Does that make sense? So so you could always just be the person who reads the card so that you get to physically read it you don't have to listen, but everybody else can listen to what's being said. Does that make sense? Sorry, the dogs decided to roll around and growl. So there's back background noise. Does that makes sense? I don't know?
Chelle: That could be a good rule actually to have. Because you you won't to always be the judge. You're just the one reading it to everybody else. So that's that's a good thought. I might have to try it when we play next.
Michele: Yeah, I mean, that does make sense. However, some People like to read the cards and you know, a lot of times in life, people view me as you know, you always have to be shoving to the front, you always have to be the one doing this or that. And what they don't realize is because my hearing loss, if I wait, then I'm out of the max, I can't have any chance of participating. And so a lot of times were perceived as being pushy or controlling. And so I think in my family, they might think that I'm trying to control thing. Because I actually have a bad reputation of being controlling, and I don't think I am at all. Of course, my family can contest that. But it's not about control. It's me about trying to set up myself for success.
Julia: Well, I don't have a hearing loss. And then I'm pretty sure my family considers me controlling and I'm going to just admit that I probably am. [laughing] When they're successful, they can thank me then. I do have a surprise thought that I I'd like to do because this is our, its first of the year, podcast and blog. And I want you to give me something you're looking forward to in 2022. Whether it's a goal, whether it's gathering with somebody. Whether it's, I don't care what it is. If it's a thank you. Something you're thankful for, for the, that you're going to be thankful for for the whole year. I'm going to need a minute too cause I don't know why this thought came to me. And then I didn't have something already there. But one of my biggest goals, and it's an ongoing goal is self help, self worth, self growth, sharing what I know with others, and continually, I spent a lot of years not taking care of myself. And it's become a goal to absolutely no matter what, that's my top priority. And I think in one of those aspects sharing my knowledge of how to live life better, no matter the circumstances, whether you're the person with hearing loss, or you're the person with hearing, and you have a family or friend with hearing loss. How to make connections better. And I think, honestly, it's why it's so important that Hearing Loss LIVE! continue no matter what it looks like to help people understand that. It's just, it's just so important to me. I think that's my biggest life goal. Any thoughts? I know it has nothing to do with games, but maybe it does. Chelle.
Chelle: So yes, sorry about that pasuse my mute button doesn't seem to want to work easily. I think I had to think about that. And one of my biggest business goals would be to bring more awareness of of hearing loss communication needs, and how it's different from Deaf culture and how we can learn from them to make our needs better known. So I think that would be a 2022 goal. Personally, I had to think about that, because you know, we got this new variant for the pandemic coming on, and I'm not sure how things are gonna go and normally my big thing would be travel. And I thought oh wait can do this because my h- my husband is getting his van again. His Wes, Westfalia Vanagon, engine fixed. And we will have our little home on wheels, so maybe we will travel again.
Michele: Goodness, you put me on the spot. No, that's fine. I think what I most want to help people do with Hearing Loss LIVE! are things that I've done for myself. And that's not to accept that you can't do something. Get out there and try it. Learn what your options are. Learn what accommodations are available to you and start making requests for CART. Because until you do it you almost have to be pushed to do it. But it's a huge deal because so many people have worked to get accommodations in place. And all of them will tell you their frustration is that people don't use it. Number one, we don't know about it. Number two, we're kind of timid and hang back and somebody knows more about this, we'll let them do that. But we all have to start stepping up and doing our part. We're all part of the hard of hearing community. And things will not get better in a big way, until we all start asking for what we need and defining our needs. And they become as visible as the needs of somebody who's culturally Deaf, that your sign language interpretation for communication access. CART, and captioning is exactly the same for us. That's what we need. We use a spoken language, we're fluent in a spoken language, we need CART and captioning. And so I really, I'm probably going to be a broken record on that topic, because it's so important. So I'm thankful for the people who do advocate. And I really want to encourage those who don't to start.
Julia: Thank you for answering my whim of a question. Now we can go back to games if you want. Any more thoughts. I hope you have enjoyed us this past year and I hope you're going to enjoy us for 2022. Next week, we have a special guest again. We have Shanna Groves, better known as the Lipreading Mom. She has a blog, some books and some other stuff. We're going to interview her and we hope you join us. Remember to like us on your Facebook. And remember to join us with our, our town hall hearings that we'll be having coming up in the new year, once a month we will have an open time for you to come and talk to us and get to know us and we can collaborate together more and more. Thank you from Hearing Loss LIVE! Bye. Hearing Loss LIVE! is looking forward to spending 2022 with you.