Chapter 6

My first thought when I got home was ‘how did I forget how much homework year elevens get...' thist teachers had written on the sheets that if I didn’t understand I didn’t have to do it. I settled at my desk with a cup of tea and a KitKat and began on my science write up – for an experiment I didn’t understand. Sighing I began work on the method, got to the conclusion and realised I didn’t know what the experiment showed, so I stopped. Thoughts swirl round my head but the only prominent one was that I thought once I got back to school everything would be alright. I thought I would be able to do it. A classic example of expectation against reality.   I decide to end the school work there. It is now that I wish I could plug in my headphones and zone out, but oh wait, I can’t. Instead I pick up the book I’m reading – the Maze Runner, and try to escape to that world. As if on cue my mum pokes her head round the door with a second cup of tea and biscuits, after placing them down on my desk she signs ‘everything okay Soph? I know today must have been hard for you.’ ‘Yeah, just don’t see the point in doing homework when I don’t know what it’s about.’ I sign back. ‘Don’t worry; just leave it until you understand things a bit better.’ Came her next reply. To this I only nod. ‘I just can’t stand the fact that everyone expects things to be the same, to not have changed.’ I quickly add. I could tell this stumped her as she just nodded and walked away.

Slowly I turn back to my computer and rapidly type into google ‘Evelyn Glennie’ it was while my mum was talking that I had this revelation, Evelyn Glennie was a deaf percussionist, someone I had learnt about in something like year three… I know that the idea of a deaf clarinettist is slightly more farfetched than a deaf percussionist, simply because you need to be able to hear the sound you’re making in order to get a decent sound that doesn’t involve a hell of a lot of squeaking.  I googled her anyway. Hoping that it would give me a slight hint into if I would ever be able to play my clarinet or not.

Nervously I open up her Wikipedia article about; unfortunately it showed that she feels which notes she is playing through vibrations, which is why she always plays the drums barefoot. It sounded like it would be possible for me to play the clarinet but it would be infinitely harder than the drums, simply because if you blow through too hard or too soft the sound doesn’t come out. Just to see if anyone had ever done it before, I google searched ‘deaf clarinettists’ but nothing came up.Sighing, I closed the page and curled up with Maze Runner again.

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