Today is Tuesday. Isn’t it?”asked Bob. What he meant was, “David is expected.” David was a new entrant to the Speech and Language Center. After his visit for therapy, the clinic would look as if it was in the path of a tornado.

David could not speak. The audiologist reported that it was only when sounds were presented at levels expected to cause pain that David stopped playing and looked up in response.

Obviously, David could not hear as well as he should, to be able to speak. David's mother had been given electric shock treatment during pregnancy. A career woman, she married late. She and her husband worked in the Computer Center of a leading University. Managing two worlds was too stressful for her. She had a nervous breakdown.

More than David’s lack of speech, his mother’s immediate concern was the deep embarrassment he caused her by his disruptive behavior in the pediatrician's waiting room. I could very well believe it. David did not seem to know where he was and what was expected of him.
 
At the end of his therapy session, when I took David back to her, he would shoot right back into the clinic. It took some effort to bundle him into the car for the homeward journey.

There was a switchover in David’s escort, from mother to grandmother. The grandmother had her own hunch as to what lay at the root of David's problems. The hired help fed David “mush” at intervals. The rest of the time David was left pretty much to himself. His mother did not pick him up, did not coo or cuddle. That he was still in diapers was proof enough of her inefficiency.

Time passed. David had not uttered a word. But the input in the clinic and elsewhere had done its trick. His behavior was more organized. He had learned the etiquette appropriate for a doctor’s office, to his mother's great relief.

Post -Xmas, David's grandmother greeted me in great excitement.  “David can hear!” She and her husband had bought two lawn movers as gifts to the two brothers. On reaching home, they found one of them did not make any sound. Since David couldn’t hear anyway, they reasoned, he could have it. 

But David preferred the noisy one. Perhaps, like others, he could  also hear the difference between the two.