Ryan Commerson and Wayne Betts Jr made a short movie - link here.

It’s a cool movie. Basically, they’re trying to change the misconception about deaf people being dumb because in the past, the word, deaf, was always associated with dumb and that hearing loss had to be fixed. They were tired of seeing how Hollywood movies would cast a deaf person to play a role of self-pity or some dumb person, so they used a good-looking deaf lady and made a sexy scene out of it in order to change the world’s perspective on deaf people.

I want to share something funny that’s happened at my work. Not a long ago, we hired a new co-worker and he sent out an intro email and I replied back to his email. Turned out that we have some similar interests and we chatted a bit. Then I went out on a vacation. When I got back, he IMed me that he had learned that I’m Deaf and he didn’t know that I was. So, we as deaf people have come a long way since then.

link

6,366 people want to learn sign language.

link

Cool. :-)

Cool.

Link

“Do profoundly deaf people who learn to talk have a voice in their head?”
– Heather & Allen Exby

“My best answer to this,” Hauser wrote, “is that the brain has a special capacity to develop phonological representations, even when it does not have auditory input. The representations might be dramatically different from what hearing individuals hear. Nevertheless, they function in the mind as ’sounds.’” Deaf schizophrenics, he continued, have auditory hallucinations, and blind schizophrenics have visual ones.

This is a good link. I think thoughts are just what they are, thoughts. They don’t really exist physically but from our minds and apparently, 99% of them express theirs phonologically while we express with our hands visually in Sign.

That’s what I call a deaf-friendly work environment!
Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless

Wow! The first caption decoder. Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless

Thanks to a nap I recently took, approximately from 5 pm to 7 pm, I couldn’t sleep despite the fact I finished reading a new book I started two days ago, Freakonomics, which is a fascinating book btw. Thanks to my little friend in my head, I thought about a few things and thought I’d write a few words about what it’s like to be a Deaf person.

A good start to this would be to ask, “how did I become deaf?” Well, pathologically, the cause is unknown but it is possibly hereditary because I was born deaf, and so was my older sister. However, we’re the only ones who are deaf in our family. So, I’ve been deaf since I was born. Ironically enough, it’s my deafness that has brought me here in America. Otherwise, I’d be still in Korea with my family and probably would be working on some rice farm or studying to become a priest. My sister’s husband is a priest, so to speak. I don’t know which is more blessing: being deaf and here in America or being hearing and stay with the family in Korea. Either way, I’m happy with who I am and where I ended up in.

Now, onto being a Deaf person, it annoys the hell out of me when a hearing person says “Oh, I wish I could be deaf like you, so I don’t have to be bothered by all those noises or having to hear those awful things.” Bull$hit. That is like telling a blind person that you wish you’re blind so you don’t see awful things (would you say porn is an awful thing to see?) on TV. I’m not gonna pretend/lie here and say that I embrace every moment of being Deaf or that it’s the best thing ever happened to me. I’m telling you right now, being deaf is HARD and if I were to be hearing, I have no doubts I’d be a lot different person than I am now. But again, I do not know if I’m actually better off being Deaf or hearing. I might end up being a drug lord, being homeless on the street or getting killed in Iraq (people with hearing loss can’t serve in army). I could be anything else in such a way that I won’t find myself writing this entry.

Since Deaf people only account less than 1% of the entire U.S. population, Deaf world is a lot like a high school except it’s a lot smaller. We keep bumping each other and everyone knows who f*cked whom. It sucks when you’re trying to date someone; that someone is also your ex-girlfriend’s best friend or roommate. And when you do that, everyone back-stab you and call you a player. Much unlike Hearing world where you could meet a person at a bar, get some alcohol going, having a good time and you both decide to have a little extra fun and spend a night together. The next morning, you may realize it wasn’t what you thought it’d be, you simply walk out and never expect to see her/him again. Case closed. Unfortunately, that isn’t so with the Deaf world.

I take the metro to work everyday so it’s not uncommon when tourists come up at me and ask where the f*ck are they or where they’re supposed to go. Depends on my mood, I may act nice and try to lip-read, which I guess more than I actually lip-read, their mouths. It looks like they want to go to the Washington monument or Union Station, whatever. But admittedly, most of the time, I simply point to my ear and shake my head as to say “sorry, I’m deaf and can’t understand what you say.” Nothing harm, right? Except when tourists happen to be a hot-looking lady in a short shorts with long legs. I’d be more than obliged to be her tour guide and if she’s visiting just for the weekend, perfect. I can show her around the city and she’d be out of my sight by Sunday. (Think of Adam Sandler in “The first 50 dates” with Drew Barrymore).

Food. I can’t really customize my meal as much as a hearing person can. “Hey waiter, this isn’t what I want. I said no condiments on my burger but I want a Swiss cheese and onions. And this is overcooked; I want mine medium-well. Oh, these buns are overburned too.” Or whatever the hell like that. I suppose I could write on some napkin to tell him what I want but he’d still f*ck it up and got my order wrong. So I just mouth, “everything” and when I get the burger, I have to customize it with my fingers or spitting it out of my mouth barbarically. If I’m allergic to something, God bless me.

So, that’s what I have to deal by being Deaf. First of all, you may notice why I keep using capital D, instead of just deaf. Well, you know, being Deaf doesn’t simply mean you cannot hear and still be able to function within the hearing world as if there’s a perfect harmony between us. When you cannot hear a f*cking word since you were born, you perceive the world differently. You learn the language differently. You can only imagine the sounds but never actually hear it. You end up interacting with similar people, not those who could hear. When you have more than one generation who’s also Deaf, the pattern continues and gradually becomes into this world we all have come to know—the Deaf world. We’re not just deaf; we’re Deaf. When we say that, we don’t mean we’re perfect; we all have shortcomings like everybody else and we dream what it’d be like to be a hearing one day, as much as you’d dream abt being a Spider-man, the next U.S. President, or even Bill Gates the Geek. But don’t ever tell us you wish you’re deaf.

Before I start this post, I just want to make a little precaution that this is being written by a twenty-something guy who did not learn a single word till he was three years old, learned ASL as the first language and was stuck with a fifth or lower grade English level all the way till high school before finally getting out of the incredibly long maze to take control of English language without being batted down with some red ink from my teachers.

I don’t have a fancy phd inititals next to my name and I’m just a guy whose high school senior picture can be found on the same wall along with my both parents’ black/white senior pictures frames. Yes, we all graduated from the same school at Illinois School for the Deaf. It is one of the many common things we share together, considering the fact we don’t share a single same blood droplet. Yes, that’s right, not a single drop and the reason for that is because I was born in Korea and got adopted. Our deafness and love hold us stronger than the bricks that form the Great Wall of China.

So, now you’re familiar with my little background and that I don’t claim to be an authority on subjects that talk about how to improve education and school system. I figure it’s time for somebody to talk a bit about deaf schools after having attended one and the only one since I was three years old, then upon graduation, went to Gallaudet University my first year before transferring to RIT for a change of major to Information Science and most importantly, having been around Deaf people all my life and reading tons of articles/blogs on issues that affect us as Deaf people.
If there’s one topic that is too familiar in the deaf community other than cochlear implant—which I would say is on par with abortion or stem cell research—is the closing of deaf institutions. Every time when a deaf school has to be closed, it touches every Deaf alumnus’ heart. Deaf schools are like a second home after spending a big chunk of time there; for some people, it can be as long as 18 years—since they were born. It also means when a deaf school has to go, ASL lost another home too. Because deaf schools are usually where most deaf kids come to learn their natural language. So, it heartily affects everybody who attended or graduated from deaf schools.

I’m not sure if this is true but someone told me that in the state of Florida, any babies or kids who are pathologically identified to have a hearing loss, they are placed or sent to Florida School for the Deaf/Blind (FSDB). It’s one reason that FSDB has one of the largest enrollment numbers among deaf schools in the United States. Well, I think that’s a great idea. I’m not sure about being automatically placed as I need to confirm this research but at least I think the state should require parents with deaf babies to visit the deaf school and get all the information, more screening tests for their kids, and actually meet people who have many years of experience working directly with deaf kids. I’d imagine they offer all kinds of advice to parents that they SHOULD know before making a decision for the future of their kids. Too often, parents either don’t know about deaf schools or are being told that deaf schools are for retarded children. If they still feel strongly about getting a cochlear implant for their kids, that is fine as long as they’ve heard both sides—us and the doctors/world at large. It’d be wonderful if all states could use this kind of policy.
Another thing about the decline in enrollment numbers, I think, has been the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It’s really a double-edged sword because while we want equal opportunity in employment and no discrimination, public schools are forced to let deaf students enroll and provide interpreters. Naturally, parents would want their kids to be close to their home so they’d pick mainstreamed schools over deaf schools. But the problem with these public schools are some of them have zero experience or have never worked with deaf kids before so they’re clueless and just place them in one deaf class because they couldn’t afford an interpreter for each individual deaf student. They let or hire a teacher who claims s/he is fluent in ASL just because they had a childhood friend who was deaf or took an ASL class for one year back in college. That’s why I support the idea that parents should visit residential schools first before they make any decision.
One issue we all know too well about deaf schools is the lack of education. Well, there’s no denying that it’s not true. But it’s not really their fault that they have a lower education standards than other public schools. Numbers play a huge part here. Not a long ago, I read something really insightful called the 80-20 rule. An Italian sociologist and economist named Vilfredo Pareto was the one who came up with the pattern of the 80-20. While studying microeconomnics, he observed that 80% of housing income in Italy was received by 20% of the Italian population. A more broadly definition is 80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes. It is known as the Pareto principle.

You’re probably going “huh?” I was just like you so I found some more practical examples. In sports, 20% percent of its top players produce 80% of the scoring. In business, 80% of the sales are made by 20 percent of the sales team. Even with our work; 20% percent of our efforts produce 80% of the results. 20% of Wikipedia users produce 80% of the content.
Beginning to see the pattern? this can even apply to the recent Gallaudet protest. 20% of the protesters report 80% of the latest news (the other 20% is probably Gallaudet’s biased PR, Washington Post and other biased media). 20% of the protesters help organize/lead/rally the 80% of the protest. Even in salaries, 20% of top paid positions get 80% of the budget.

Remember, it is just a theory, not the perfect universal answer or pattern to everything but it can help understand why certain things happen and explain the numbers. So, how is this related to the lack of education at deaf schools? Okay, let’s say 20% of students make up 80% of the school’s academic success. Enrollment numbers are very small at school, like at ISD, there is about 100 students in high school so that means there would be about twenty students who are academic. Now, in mainstreamed public schools, they usually have a thousand students or even two thousand, so they’ll have 200 students or 400 students who are academically driven. With those higher numbers, public schools can afford to offer more classes such as AP courses. They’ll have students who can take AP calculus and put about twenty students in the class and others in different courses like English. You can’t expect to put all 20 deaf students in one AP class and probably only a few can take it. To principals, it’s not a good use of teachers’ time and money to teach two or three students in one class. Like I said at the beginning, it is all about the numbers and the lower the numbers are, the lower the education level is going to be. It’s as simple as that.

So, where’s the solution in this? This is going to sound simplistic. Make an exchange program with mainstreamed schools. Establish a partnership with them. Send deaf students to public schools to take advanced courses that deaf schools don’t or cannot offer. At the same time, public schools can send their students to deaf school for ASL class for those who are interested in learning ASL and perhaps want to become a deaf teacher in the future.

How did I know about this? because I was in the program before. My high school, ISD, had a partnership with Jacksonville High School and I took an AP math class and physics there. Other deaf students also took psychology or history. JHS also had their own ASL class for those students who are first year and second year ASL class is taught at my school for deeper interaction with deaf students.
I remember how those ASL classes were always seem to be full of hot girls and I had a crush on one girl who was an all-state volleyball player. Also, one girl from the class is now an English teacher and another girl is taking up deaf education to become a teacher too. I would say this exchange program is a win-win situation.
The only thing I’m going to add is a tutor program for those deaf students who go to public schools. If they wanted to take classes at public schools, they’d be required to attend tutor sessions because they will receive tons of homework. They couldn’t meet teachers after school or end of classes because they would miss their transports to take them back to deaf school. Also, tutors know ASL and would be able to explain concepts more clearly and assist with whatever questions they may have.

I’m going to talk about sports now. I’m not very tall or big but I was fortunate to be a starter on varsity teams (football, basketball, and track). If I went to another school, I would never been a starter and would be lucky to make a varsity in one sport, not three. Sports can play a big recruiter tool; look no further than those college teams that offer big scholarships to top athletes in the nation. If there’s going to be one thing that deaf schools can attract students from mainstreamed schools, it’s the sports. I personally know two guys who transferred from mainstreamed schools to our school so they can be starters instead of benchwarmers at their schools. Who would want to be on a bench all the time knowing you could be a starter at another school? Coaches and players find difficulty communicating with deaf players and they just find their way back to the bench and be a fan supporter. That is one thing deaf schools have an “advantage” over other schools. However, it’s the scheduling that is entirely a different story.

We play in a very tough football conference called Western Illinois Valley Conference that consists of twelve teams and is split in two divisions—North and South. This conference is one of the toughest conferences in the state of Illinois and three or four teams would be ranked in top ten every year and has brought state championships for many years. Their enrollment numbers are growing while ours would stay the same or decline. Also, smaller schools would consolidate together to boost their enrollment or to solve their small budget problems by merging together. For us, no, we’re definitely not going to see more deaf babies being born. Their schools are becoming bigger while we stay the same or smaller. So, it’s no brainer that we always end up with the worst record.

In my freshmen year, we were 0-9 but was awarded a forfeit win because IHSA busted one school for letting an over-aged kid play. The next year, we’re 0-9 again, junior year same again, 0-9. So, my first three years of playing high school football were combined 0-27. I’m not going to count that forfeit win to make myself better. It’s no fun coming in the game, knowing you’re already doomed. There is probably no worse feeling than that. It really sucked. But during our senior year, having the largest class in five years and growing up together during those rough three years and a revamped new offense system that showed a lot of reverses and fakes with two wingmen, we finally WON a game. That was against Meredosia, which had about the same number of students as we did. We went on a winning streak, defeating Routt Catholic (our biggest upset win), Virginia, Northwestern in our homecoming game, before losing to Triopia, which was a state-ranked team. We were 5-3 and had to beat Greenfield, a perennial playoffs team to earn a playoff bid in our last game and guess what? we beat them! Then we played against a powerhouse football team, El Paso, that had almost 400 students versus our 130 students. Needless to say, we got beat badly. As for basketball? for all four years I’ve played, we’ve never had a winning season, so there’s not much to say about that.

So, what’s my point in all those? Make deaf schools independent of those non-sense conferences. I’m jealous of other deaf schools that find a way to play a few deaf schools in their schedule. Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD) in Washington, DC often play against deaf school teams during their seasons including flying to California and Texas. Some deaf schools host deaf-schools-only tournaments. My dream would to create a new kind of conference for deaf school teams if that’s ever possible, so those so-called Deaf National Team of the Years honors will be legitimate instead of questionable. My fondest sports memories came from playing against deaf teams in Central School Sports for the Deaf (CSSD) tournaments. Our enrollment numbers are similar, we share same disability, we can actually talk to each other after games and make friends. I never did that with any hearing teams, so to speak. I’m not trying to sound as if I am against hearing people but it’s just the way things are. You can’t help it if you wanted to.

I realize this post is becoming very long and if you’re still reading this, well, I’m glad. I realize this is more of a personal experience than specific ways/suggestions to improve deaf schools. One more thing I’m going to bring up is the people or staff who work at deaf schools. I really think that there should be at least 50% or more deaf people working or teaching at deaf schools. This ensures that deaf kids will have an exposure to deaf role models and for deaf people to have a job. I’m not against hearing people who want to work with deaf kids and be a teacher but there are hundreds of schools elsewhere that they can get a teaching job while deaf people would prefer to teach at deaf schools where they can use ASL and without interpreters. That’s not saying deaf people cannot teach at public schools as they can use an intepreter but I don’t think hearing students would be as responsive if they had to use an interpreter to talk to the deaf teacher. It’s almost like hiring an English teacher to teach a Spanish class and use Spanish interpreters to translate English to Spanish. In dorms, deaf residental advisors can share stories or teach deaf kids how to get through life and in the real world as a Deaf person when oralism or cochlear implants didn’t work for them. I spent 15 years at ISD and all of my role models were Deaf, no hearing, to be frank.

That goes my post with my experience at a deaf school along with some suggestions that can help make deaf schools better. What I would really like to see is any hearing parents with a deaf child should go to visit a deaf residential school first before they make a decision. If they feel strongly about getting cochlear implant for their child, that is okay as long as they’ve considered all options but I don’t want to see them to feel that by not getting one means their child won’t be successful and cannot function in the world as we know it. I think that the sooner we realize or accept our deafness, the lesser we are going to struggle with our identities and where we belong to, also the sooner we can get on with learning. Deaf children would have developed a foundation in language development through ASL and be able to express their feelings or thoughts without spending tons of time in front of a mirror trying to pronounce between D and T. I know it’s hard for hearing people to see through that because they want to see their children as normal as they can be but they are normal, just a little different like everyone else is different.
I don’t regret for a single moment that I went to a deaf school at Illinois School for the Deaf and I’m looking forward to our 10 years reunion coming in 2009. It’ll be great to see both of my parents’ frames and mine on the wall one more time.

That’s the amount of dollars the Board of Trustees have agreed to pay if they asked her to resign. Obviously, it’s going to take a lot to convince the BoTs to see if it’s worth two million dollars to replace her. Or the FSSA (facuty, staff, students and alumni) finds a way to come up with that amount of money and they can say “Look, we have two million dollars. Please step down.” but that’s just me and my radical thinking. I got this information from where else? Ridorlive.com. Look below about Jane’s contract.

This post isn’t going to be of a Pulitizer’s prize material but a curious observation and opinion by a person who was once a Gallaudet student during his first year of college in 1999 and has been following the protest closely.

The volcano has erupted once again. The protest first started in last May when students were unhappy with the selection of the next University president in Jane K. Fernandes and felt that the presidential search process was unfair and flawed. They also felt that JKF was pampered by I. King Jordan as they both hold a close friendship and JKF has risen all the way from her first job as a Vice President of the Laurent Clerc National Center (which is ironic, that I will explain a moment later), then became a Provost and now she is set to be the next President.

Students feel that with the close relationship between Jordan and she, Jordan would still have some voice/input/control in the future Gallaudet decision-making and isn’t completely out of the picture, basically leaving the current administration intact without going through a big change that would leave him behind the ship. It isn’t very hard to see this because last weekend, two Gallaudet buildings were already named after him and his wife. Perhaps Jordan felt that he deserved some kind of a special party (how does a lobster bisque soup sound to you?) and two buildings being honored after him and his wife for all his hard work, fund-raising skills and one deaf quote that has made him famous, “Deaf people can do anything but hear.” This only enables students to disagree further from him and his administration, feeling that there is an oppression and a suspected fiscal management—-a corruption at play. Gallaudet probably would need more than ten professional CPAs or positions equivalent of IRS agents to audit every cent that has come into the university. Something is sure to find there.

Now, back to the protest, it seems that the protest has caught on a wild fire when someone had an idea of locking out the HMB building where most classes and professors’ classes are. This is strategic because it doesn’t require as many people as it would need to block the whole campus. As in most other protests, they are like a fire or a car engine; all they need is a spark to get them going. Gallaudet students got that spark when DSP decided to get physical with students as one DSP officer tried to choke a student after students kept standing in his way. This was caught on the video. Another DSP officer used a mace spray in an attempt to “shoo” them away out of the HMB building. How did the Administration respond? The public office released a statement that no such accidents occurred and no one was hurt. They probably weren’t aware that those two incidents were actually caught on the videos. So, this only added more to the fire. Now, the Gallaudet Protest has found their momentum, with more people now convinced that there is something that needs to be done about the administration, starting with JKF’s resignation.

To really understand the whole protest, it isn’t as complicated as it sounds. There is a conflict in the philosophy between JKF (and IKJ too) and the FSSA. JKF has announced that in her future plans, she has a goal to include all communication modes from ASL to cued speech to pure oral. She even supports the idea of having an oral interpreter in a classroom if there are some oral students who have no knowledge of ASL and wouldn’t understand what a deaf professor may be signing. JKF sees a problem that with the declining number in unique deaf students who attend deaf schools like myself and my parents, there would be less enrollment numbers to Gallaudet. To help boost the number, she feels that she’d need to welcome ALL kinds of students who have some hearing loss or all of it regardless of what communication mode they use. Gallaudet will give them the accessibility they need when they get to the campus, making it more mainstreamed than it is now.

It may sound good and may help with the enrollment numbers but that’s not what Gallaudet is about. The founder of Gallaudet University, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, went on a ship to Europe to seek what would be the best possible education for the deaf people and in that, he discovered sign language and he personally brought Laurent Clerc, a deaf educator, to America to teach sign language to the deaf. He had to convince Clerc to come with him and there is a rumor that Gallaudet’s first deaf pupil, Alice Cosworth, was the reason why Clerc came, in which they eventually did get married.

With a language that all deaf people can understand, they began to communicate their thoughts better, thus, education is possible. However, the sign language, now known as American Sign Language (ASL), have been going through so much oppression that black slaves or Jews would be embarrassed to hear. For the longest time, hearing people thought ASL was not a language and that it’s equivalent to apes making some funny gestures and in the Milan conference back in 1880, it was decided that ASL must be banned and only oral method shall be taught. As a result, Deaf teachers lost their jobs and ASL almost became extinct but who was there to save the language? None other than Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and the college he founded.

Jane K. Fernandes was a former Vice President at the Laurent Clerc National Center. Instead of promoting or encouraging ASL to be the primary language all across the campus, she does not expect a high level of fluency from each faculty, staff, or a student. Now, she is selected to be the next President and her vision is to welcome all communication modes and expects that such accessibility is to be met. In short, she does not consider ASL to be a requirement to be a student or to work at the university. A good example would be in order to apply to colleges, you’d need to write a strong good essay in English, right? At Gallaudet University, you don’t have to be. There is no specific ASL screening test for faculty, staff and students. Basically, it is possible to waltz through the university with a little knowledge of ASL. FSSA doesn’t want that. They want to see ASL to be as natural as other languages and not to take a backseat to other languages. It seems that the real problem still lies between us and hearing people that they still treat ASL as secondary language and do not want to appoint a person who is deaf-centric and use ASL solely without resorting to what they always want to see—a deaf person who can talk.

This is precisely why FSSA does not want her to be the next leader for the deaf. ASL is like oxygen; we can’t live without it.

UNITY FOR GALLAUDET!

*disclaimer - all of the above was written with speculation and does not claim to be factual or accurate.

Thanks to a nap I recently took, approximately from 5 pm to 7 pm, I couldn’t sleep despite the fact I finished reading a new book I started two days ago, Freakonomics, which is a fascinating book btw, that is supposed to make me sleepy but didn’t. Thanks to my little friend in my head, I thought about a few things and thought I’d write a few words about what it’s like to be a Deaf person.

A good start to this would be to ask, “how did I become deaf?” Well, scientificially, the cause is unknown but it is probably heredietary since I was born deaf, and so was my older sister but we’re the only ones who are deaf in our family. So, I’ve been deaf since I was born. Ironically enough, it’s my deafness that has brought me here in America. Otherwise, I’d be still in Korea with my family and probably would be working on some rice farms or studying to become a priest. My sister’s husband is a priest, so to speak. I don’t know which is more blessing: being deaf and here in America or being hearing and stay with the family in Korea. Either way, I’m happy with who I am and what I end up living with.

Now, onto being a Deaf person, it annoys the hell out of me when a hearing person says “Oh, I wish I could be deaf like you, so I don’t have to be bothered by all those noises or having to hear those awful things.” Bull$hit. That is like telling a blind person that you wish you’re blind so you don’t see awful things (would you say porn is an awful thing to see?) on the tv. I’m not gonna pretend/lie here and say that I embrace every moment of being Deaf or that it’s the best thing ever happened to me. I’m telling you right now, being deaf is HARD and if I were to be hearing, I have no doubts I’d be a lot different person than I am now. But again, I do not know if I’m actually better off being Deaf or hearing. I might end up being a drug lord, being homeless on the street or getting killed in Iraq. I could be anything else in such a way that I won’t find myself writing this entry.

Since Deaf people only account less than 1% of the entire U.S. population, Deaf world is a lot like a high school except it’s a lot smaller. We keep bumping each other and everyone knows who f*cked who. It sucks when you’re trying to date someone; that someone is also your ex-girlfriend’s best friend or roommate. And when you do that, everyone back-stab you and call you a player. Much unlike Hearing World where you could meet a person at a bar, get some alcohol going, having a good time and you both decide to have a little extra fun and spend a night together. The next morning, you might realize it wasn’t what you thought it’d be, you simply walk out and never expect to see her/him again. Case closed. Unfortunately, that isn’t so with the Deaf world.

I take the metro to work everyday so it’s not uncommon when tourists come up at me and ask where the f*ck are they or where they’re supposed to go. Depends on my mood, I may act nice and try to lip-read, which I guess more than I actually lip-read, their mouths. It looks like they want to go to the Washington monument or Union Station, whatever. But admittedly, most of the time, I simply point to my ear and shake my head as to say “sorry, I’m deaf and can’t understand what you say.” Nothing harm, right? Except when tourists happen to be a hot-looking lady in a short shorts with long legs. I’d be more than obliged to be her tour guide and if she’s visiting just for the weekend, perfect. I can show her around the city and she’d be out of my sight by Sunday. (Think of Adam Sandler in “The first 50 dates” with Drew Barrymore).

Food. I can’t really customize my meal as much as a hearing person can. “Hey waiter, this isn’t what I want. I said no condiments on my burger but I want a Swiss cheese and onions. And this is overcooked; I want mine medium-well. Oh, these buns are overburned too.” Or whatever the hell like that. I suppose I could write on some napkin to tell him what I want but he’d still f*ck it up and got my order wrong. So I just mouth, “everything” and when I get the burger, I have to customize it with my fingers or spitting it out of my mouth barbarically. If I’m allergic to something, God bless me.

So, that’s what I have to deal by being Deaf. First of all, you may notice why I keep using capital D, instead of just deaf. Well, you know, being Deaf doesn’t simply mean you cannot hear and still be able to function within the hearing world as if there’s a perfect harmony between us. When you cannot hear a f*cking word since you were born, you perceive the world differently. You learn the language differently. You can only imagine the sounds but never actually hear it. You end up interacting with similar people, not those who could hear. When you have more than one generation who’s also Deaf, the pattern continues and gradually becomes into this world we all have come to know—the Deaf world. We’re not just deaf; we’re Deaf. When we say that, we don’t mean we’re perfect; we all have shortcomings like everyone else and we dream what it’d be like to be a hearing one day, as much as you’d dream abt being a Spider-man, the next U.S. President, or even geekier the Bill Gates. But don’t ever tell us you wish you’re deaf.