Story of the Day 1/31/2011

Another interpreter, today.
And Sarah knew, from her first sentence, that it was going to be a bad day.
She introduced herself by saying “Hi, my name is…” which was a bad start, since the grammar was all wrong. And it went downhill from there.
Most of it was so bad that I can’t even repeat it, because that would be mean. Most of it.
Of course, I suppose it wont kill to repeat the one incident of the day that was, at least funny. Sarah was asked a question by her teacher. The interpreter couldn’t read Sarah ‘s finger spelling and answered, “meow” instead of the correct answer. This unexpected feline cry caused her teacher to raise an eyebrow. Fortunately, he doesn’t think that Sarah is quite as retarded as that answer was.

While this was going on, Sarah’s brother Aaron was trying to right the wrongs of the world. Well, to be specific, he was trying to show enhanced sensitivity to his younger sister, so he has decided to spend a few days not wearing his hearing aids , so that he can experience being deaf , first hand.
He thinks that, at the very least, it will help him to remember to sign to her.

This went well except for two things. First of all, I didn’t’ realize he was doing it and I spent several minutes chatting away to his smiling face without getting much of a response. If I had been close enough for him to speech read, he might have kept up the illusion of hearing a little longer, but….and , second, a neighbor spotted his car in the driveway, while I was out, and knowing that he was home rang the bell. And rang the bell. And rang the bell. And then she worried that he was hurt, and called me.

I will need to make a sign for the front door that says, “He is home, but he is practicing being deaf. Please come back when he returns to being his regular insensitive self.”
Or something like that.
I will let you know how his exercise in empathy is going.

At any rate, over dinner, he said to me, in ASL ( so there as been some improvement), that Sarah is weird. When I realized what he had said (he needs to work on his grammar, although, it is better than most of the terps Sarah has at school) , I looked at him and replied “ That must mean that she is not adopted.”