The first time Craig Gass’ deaf mother came to see him do stand-up comedy, he hired a female sign language interpreter to stand on stage. Then, halfway through his routine, he turned his back to get a drink of water, so his mother couldn’t see his face, and said into the microphone, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gass, I think I’m in love with your son.”
The interpreter, obligated to repeat every word Gass said, did so, and continued, “I’m in love with him — and I think I want to marry him.”
The audience cracked up, while his mother was perplexed — until he turned around and let her in on the joke.
What’s funny about growing up in a deaf family? Almost everything, if you ask Gass, 56, who was the only hearing member of his household. His mother was deaf by birth. His father lost his hearing in a childhood accident. His sister “got my mother’s genes. I got my father’s,” he says.
So from the time he could speak, Gass was doing more than the average child around the house. He answered the phone. He spoke for family members. He would sign what actors were saying in the movies. If his mother got pulled over while driving, he would apologize to the police officer.
“On the plus side, I got to play my music as loud as I wanted,” says the comedian, who appeared at One Night Stan’s in Waterford this past week. “People always think a deaf household is quiet. Actually, it’s the loudest house on the block. There’s nobody to tell you to turn it down.
“It didn’t dawn on me until I moved out how loud I was. My roommates would say, ‘Do you have to slam the door like that?’ And I would say, ‘Whoa, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’ ”
“On the plus side, I got to play my music as loud as I wanted,” says the comedian, who appeared at One Night Stan’s in Waterford this past week. “People always think a deaf household is quiet. Actually, it’s the loudest house on the block. There’s nobody to tell you to turn it down.
“It didn’t dawn on me until I moved out how loud I was. My roommates would say, ‘Do you have to slam the door like that?’ And I would say, ‘Whoa, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’ ”
A way of life
Only 3.6% of the U.S. population is deaf or severely hard of hearing, so many Americans rarely encounter a deaf person.
For Gass, it was a way of life.
He spent his school hours in noisy play, then came home to a quiet (if loud) apartment in Mount Vernon, New York. His parents divorced when he was starting grade school. He spoke for his mother when the lawyers would call. (“You tell them your father is a son of a b—-!” he says she told him.) When he was 9, Craig, his mother and sister moved to Tucson, Arizona, so his sister could attend an elite school for the deaf.
But if you assume all this made life hard for Gass, you’d be wrong.
“I was very happy. My mother was very affectionate. She spoiled me. She didn’t even correct my sign language, so I ended up being really bad at it.
“As I got older, (deaf) friends of hers would come to visit. They would be signing to each other, and I tried to join the conversation. And her friends would go, ‘What is he signing?’ And my mom would go, ‘I know, he’s bad, but it’s so cute. My little kid is so dumb and adorable.’ ”
Gass, who is a fantastic impressionist — he has appeared regularly on “The Howard Stern Show,” “King of Queens,” “Family Guy” and “Sex in the City” — grew up doing impressions for his family. Because they couldn’t hear him, he would add physical mimicry and body language, something he still does today.
That wasn’t the only thing that helped his career.
“People would stare at us when I was growing up, because I was always in a group of deaf people where everybody was moving their hands around.
“It used to make me uncomfortable, but I developed a thick skin for it. And a thick skin is something you definitely need in stand-up comedy.
“Also, deaf people are very expressive. That helped me a lot, because I’m very, very performative when I’m on stage.”
Humor connects us
We often make assumptions about people who deal with physical challenges. One of them is that life is more miserable. How nice to learn that, at least in Gass’ case, laughter was even more common than in other households.
“There was so much laughing about being deaf with our family. Not mean or cruel, but just easy laughter, poking fun at ourselves all the time.”
When asked for an example, Gass recites what he says was a common joke:
“When a paralyzed person dies, they bury the wheelchair in the ground with them. When a blind person dies, they put the seeing eye dog in the ground with them.
“Do you know what happens when a deaf person dies?
“They put their interpreter in the ground with them.”
Ba-dum-bump.
Gass cracks up when he tells that, and you get the sense that laughter, for him, has truly been the best medicine. But it is for all of us. Studies show that laughter improves blood flow, lowers cortisol levels, helps prevent heart disease and enhances your immune system.
You don’t even have to take a pill.
Gass notes that when hearing folks found out his family was deaf, they would often “dumb down” their conversation, “like we were mentally deficient.”
Which Gass also found funny, if a bit ironic. “People who knew nothing about us were overly sensitive to us being deaf, while we were privately being incredibly insensitive to it.”
As proof, Gass ends with a memory of sitting with his deaf sister at a party. She signed to her comedian brother, “Do you want to hear a good joke?”
He replied, “Sure.”
She responded “So do I.”
Get it? “Hear” a good joke?
Gass laughs. We all should. Laughter truly is the shortest distance between people. And it’s the only language the whole world can speak.
Mitch Albom writes for the Detroit Free Press. His column is distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
