Story of the Day 11/1/2011

Sarah and Dana were speaking in the Learning Center. The Learning center is a "serious" version of study hall. It is Sarah's 10th period non-class, and Dana, who is eager to learn more ASL, comes to it from the Library and practices signing with Sarah, every day.

Dana and Sarah were signing away and Dana was laughing. Loudly.
Apparently Dana has a loud laugh.

One of the Learning Center staff came over and made it clear to the interpreter that the laughing had to stop because this was the Learning Center and the girls were obviously not working.

The interpreter told her that the girls were, indeed, working. Sarah was teaching Dana ASL.
The woman said, "That is not true, I can see that they are having fun!"
"Well," countered the interpreter, "they are having fun!"
The woman stalked off.

Dana wondered why the woman addressed all of this to the interpreter.
"Because she thinks you are Deaf." Sarah replied.
"Why would she think that?"
"Well, people always think my mom is deaf when we are signing to one another in the store, and then, if they need to say something to her they start waving their arms around. And when my mom starts talking to them and asks them what they are trying to say, they stand there and look stunned."
"They do?"

Not only do they do that, but as I told Sarah, when she related this story to me, years ago, when Aaron was 5 and 6 and 7, he loved to talk. This was the very same deaf boy that the Deaf School refused to provide speech therapy for because, according to them, he was too deaf to benefit from it and learn spoken English and I had to accept that.
The problem is that Aaron didn't accept it. He loved to talk. Using Spoken English.
The problem was that he is deaf and at that age his speech reading skills and his auditory skills with his hearing aids were not quite good enough to let him follow a conversation in Spoken English. At least not an intelligent one.
What we usually ended up doing is that I would sign to him and he would speak, in English, to me.
This caused lot of confusion. not for us, but for other people.

Numerous times, we would be at a store or the library and someone would come over and say to Aaron, "Can you tell your mother...." or " Can you ask your mother..."
When he was the one who couldn't hear.