Deaf for a Day, Lesson for Life

I am currently taking ASL 1010 in school right now.  I figured that I needed the language credits for my degree, and this was the most useful language to take right now in my life.  Part of the course requirements is that we need to spend one whole day (at least eight hours) being deaf.  This meant no listening to music in the car, not listening to sound on the TV, no talking at all.  All of our communication had to be through the sign language that we had learned.  I decided to do this today, forgetting that we had a church activity in the afternoon. When I remembered that, my wife asked if I would want to do it on another day.  I thought about that, and then realized Johnny and Eliza do not get to pick which days are convenient for them.  They go to every church activity, family get together, party, whatever as deaf people.  This would be a good experience in trying to communicate with the hearing world while deaf.

It was hard.  I felt like I was not really part of the activity because I couldn't really communicate with anyone.  Erica served as an interpreter, but sometimes she did not know what I was trying to sign, and I did not know hoe to better communicate it.  I felt like people were kind of just avoiding me, not on purpose, but just because the whole situation was awkward.  These people are normally my friends, but they couldn't talk to me, so they didn't.  After a while, I just followed Johnny around, and didn't really participate.  I wondered if this was how Johnny felt everyday on the playground.

Then I learned a great lesson from him.  He spends all day watching the other kids play on the playground and tries to participate with them, and is greatly ignored by them.  But he goes out there everyday and tries again anyway.  I was reminded of that at the activity, and realized that in a cool way, he had made some friends.  There were two other boys at the activity that were a little older than Johnny.  One of them kept asking me where Johnny was when he could not find him.  Then they played in the drinking fountain, taking turns spraying each other with the water, and laughing the whole time.  Then, the three of them found a worm on the ground and laughed as they each tried to pick it, Johnny was the first successful one, and they all laughed.  I realized that despite Johnny's differences, he had managed to make friends, and they found a way to laugh and enjoy each other that did not depend on being hearing or deaf.  I realized that the limits we saw in Johnny making friends were limits that we put on him, not limits he saw himself. I think he knows that the kids sometimes treat him differently, but maybe on some level he understands why, and somehow he has the patience to wait until they figure out that he is worthwhile to be around.