The Buddy System** When I was in school, in Germany, it was very important to learn things by heart. We were required to learn long poems by heart. We had to recite them, or write them out in the exact order in which they were read. We had to learn everything off by heart, and there was almost no one in my class who couldn't. I was never very good at remembering that way, but I became a pretty good writer, and I wrote out everything I ever learned. My memory is not very good. I have no recollection at all of German grammar or vocabulary. And I never learned German by the book, as I learned English. I had to learn German by the ear, and it seemed to be a good method. It has also been useful in remembering, and writing, a lot of mathematics. In music, I became somewhat better, and I was lucky to learn a great deal from hearing music by ear. And I went to music concerts constantly and heard classical music, which was very demanding, although there were occasional bits of light music which were a bit easier. In piano lessons, I was always bad, because I am tone deaf. It was a good thing, because I didn't have a chance to learn enough. I tried to get by with no piano lessons at all, but I think that I got by only because I had a very active ear. We always hear a lot when we're little children. We remember that sounds happen—there is no silence—and we begin to imitate those sounds. Then we learn the words, and from hearing the words, we learn the name for those sounds, and then we imitate those sounds without hearing anything. And when we start talking, we get into trouble because we don't know what we are talking about, and we get mixed up with the imitations. If you read something about an interview with an ordinary grown-up, for example, and he says, "I had an adventure yesterday," and then a long pause, and then he begins telling what happened, and he is doing all the talking while he is saying what happened, but what he is saying and what he did aren't the same. It is always the reverse of what it is when you talk with someone you know well. You always speak so that your listener understands what you are saying. But a child doesn't know any of that. There's no thinking in it, just imitating sounds that you hear all the time. If there's a noise, you imitate it, and if it is a word that you know, then you imitate the sound of the word. But you have no conception of words, you don't know the meaning of words, and you don't know anything about imitations. That is why children are very noisy. And we were noisier than many children. We used to sit in a circle and everyone would have a turn being the one that imitated the sound he heard. And then someone would join in with another sound, and after a little time, we would get onto sentences that were being talked, words that we hadn't ever heard, such as "sugar," or "milk." "Tortoises, my sweet," and that sort of thing. We had a lot of talk with those two and a lot of noises. When we got to the words, "dear, dear, dear, my honey," we'd try to imitate the right one, and so there was a good deal of noise. We took a big turn in imitating sounds because we listened a lot, so we didn't make mistakes. And it turned out to be a big advantage. I don't think there are many children who are good at imitating sounds because they listen a lot. We imitated sounds more than anything else. From noises, then sounds, we progressed to voices, and sounds that had names that you were familiar with. And from those, we learned words, then sentences, and finally whole paragraphs. And there was always noise in the room—we always had someone imitating sounds. We got away with the noise because we imitated the same sounds in the same way every day, and they didn't get mixed up with each other, or with the imitations of our teachers, or with anyone else's speech. We were a very noisy family, always making a lot of noise, which got us into a lot of trouble. When I was six years old I became a teacher in a deaf school, and I taught at this school for quite a while. From the way we talked to each other when we were younger, I can't say whether or not we always remembered to use each other's names. Sometimes you have to talk as if you are speaking to the whole family or the whole group, but then there are differences. For example, I would call my brother "Gustav" to a stranger in a friendly manner, and in order to teach him something, I would use "Gustave," or Gustaf" if I wanted him to know that it was me. The "af" at the end of the name indicated that it was an adult, not a child, talking. And I might call my mother by her first name to a friend and her husband, or children, to tell them about things of which they had the greatest interest and to a few selected friends whom I considered as being of the highest social class, and who were of my own age. But most often I called my mother only when we were alone. In school, on the other hand, it is always "yes, you." You say, "You may sit here," and you always speak to one or two persons only. If you are speaking to a whole group of people, you have to use "dear" for every one, or use their name in a friendly way, such as "Good-morning," "Good-night," "Good-bye." But if you are addressing a person of your own group, you can use either his name or "you" for a person in the same group as the person you are addressing. There is no hard and fast rule that you have to use the same word for the same person all the time. You can use different names when you have different relationships. For the most part, you try to use names because there are times when you are working together and you have to be a little quieter. When you use no names you get to be friends with more people, because when people are called by their name all the time, you can't keep up the habit. The difference between speaking to a lot of people or a few people is in our attitude and relationship with those people, and not in our relationship with our own class or people. We want to be "like" a person and be known as being "like" him. We don't want to be seen as strange people who are all different from ourselves. A deaf person who is different from the others is considered to be alien. When we hear a strange person speak, it is very different. We hear a lot more noise, but in a much quieter way. People who are deaf tend to be silent for a little while, while we listen very carefully, and we are very quiet when we hear what is being said. At the beginning of our talks, we say things that are interesting. We hear something about what someone is doing, or talking about, and we begin talking about what we hear. We try to remember what has been said, and how it was said, and we repeat it word for word. We talk and talk, and then someone says, "You've repeated everything so many times that the conversation has lost its meaning." That is true, and we haven't learned to control the talking yet. And the next time we talk, we begin by saying something from what we have heard. We can understand almost any conversation and know the meaning of every sentence, even if we don't understand every word. The meaning comes from the sound of the whole sentence. We know exactly what we are saying. It is difficult for us to understand other people's sentences because we cannot express ourselves so easily as other people. I couldn't express myself at all if I weren't able to hear myself speak. We can talk a lot in one day because we know what the other person is saying, and we repeat every sentence word for word, and do so until we have forgotten it. It can be a bit funny because then it will come back to you in a totally different way, so that the way you expressed yourself in the first place will be very different from the way you expressed yourself the second time. The next sentence will be expressed differently because of the feeling, or the way you were feeling when you said it the first time. I learned that when I had my child who had cancer. It was such a terrible shock. I told them, I had a good life, and my husband had a good job, and then all of a sudden it became different. I couldn't express myself, but when I heard my child dying—and I thought he was dead—I cried, and the way I cried said, "My child, my child," the way I cried when he was born. Then I heard him talking, but he couldn't really talk, he could just say a few words, and he had to do this for two months before he could come home. When a death happens in a family, there is a lot of discussion because the person has been a part of the family for so long. Someone may say to the wife, "Don't cry