Today was pretty normal to begin with. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Nothing had anything to take note of. I woke up at whatever time that I wanted to, lounged around in my room for a bit, and then went to lunch. It wasn’t till I was on my way there that I noticed something.
I couldn’t hear the birds.
A lot of people don’t/ can’t really understand why this upsets me. But I love to listen to the birds around lunch time. I love when I’m walking to see all the birds fly from one tree to another. I could still watch them… but I couldn’t hear them.
This was really discomforting. I didn’t know how to fix it. I mean I know I said before how a laugh at the table that I see and I don’t know what the joke is really frustrated me but this was just downright worrisome. Maybe it’s easier for people who have never had their hearing. I can’t imagine trying to go through all of this with not knowing if I’d be able to hear soon.
It kind of put me into a funk all day. I tried to think about all of the things that deaf people could miss out on, besides the big ones like music and etc. or the other kinds of challenges that I would have. As I was going through the lunch line at Zach’s I realized one. If I was at a place that I had no means of pointing to the food I would not be able to order what I wanted unless I had someway to write it. I realized that’s kind of degrading.
I mean, no matter where a deaf/mute person goes they are very unlikely to have someone there who can sign with them. It’s not like a person who doesn’t know the language in a foreign country. Because usually they can go back to a place that the majority speaks the same language as them. Deaf people, on the other hand, live in our towns. They live in the same place we do. Their home is where most people do not understand sign language. The same sandwich shop that they go might have a person there who can sign and they get the right order, or they might not.
It just always seems like a gamble. I kept contemplating on this when all of a sudden there was a bright LED flashlight in my eyes. Dwayne, one of our campus safety officers, was messing with a girl on the basketball team and was trying to get her attention.
This made me think of a deaf person trying to interact with law enforcement officials. I mean, how is the person supposed to be able to follow directions, answer justly, or even know what is going on unless the cop just so happens to sign? What if he doesn’t? What do you do then?
This is why I really want to start something here at Wofford for more of disabilities awareness… class, seminar, I don’t know. My fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi, already has a philanthropy organization called Push America which is used to raise awareness for people with disabilities.
Perhaps I’ll look into talking to our organization. It just is kind of upsetting to see that Wofford would have no means to accommodate to a disabled person. Half of the buildings you cannot get into, and even if you can it become incredibly difficult to move around. It’s also been very strange to see the reactions of people who have never been around a disabled person too. For that matter, most of Wofford has not. People drag me around, snap in my face, wave a burger in my face, or put things directly in my mouth. I’d like for people to know how to act around people with disabilities rather than either one; be awkward, or two; do things that are completely wrong.
Tests were a little different today. Ben and I had noticed that one of the false positives that I have been having could also be a false negative. We decided that we had to adjust our testing format because without doing so we would have been compiling faulty data. We discussed the false positive/negative and decided it would be best to watch it and mark it in case it shows up again in a pattern.
We moved on through our day. I decided it would be best to return to my room and continue reading. Instead, I got distracted by trying to see what were the actual signs for the slang signing that we’ve been doing. In order to educate both Ben and myself I continued for quite a few many hours. I learned a bit of basic vocabulary and have corrected myself on words that we didn’t have the proper teaching for. This was a pretty easy change with Ben because we were able to change it fairly quickly since we just started yesterday.
We both get frustrated because I keep trying to sign how our slang sign is not right and the real word is “This”. He keeps missing it because I’m not able to portray my thoughts easily. This made me think about how deaf people must feel when they are trying to display complex ideas. I think that I would just give up on trying to sign it and simply write it down.
But then comes the idea of a debate of sorts. Ben and I get into debates over philosophy many a times and I wonder how that would go if I was completely deaf but knew sign fairly well. Would I give up and simply go to typing up a document, and then handing it to him while I wait for one back? Probably not.
So instead I’ll keep trying to educate myself so that whenever I meet someone who can only speak through sign I will not embarrass them or disgrace them by not knowing how to sign.
So that’s more or less been how my day has gone. A mixed emotion of wanting to learn sign but wondering how even learning it will help a deaf person in the long run. So what do we do? How do we help this situation? Do we place materials over all of campus in the happenstance that a blind or deaf person happens to visit/go to our college? Or do we wait, ask them what they would like once they get her, and provide for them? It seems like doing something beforehand would be more appropriate.
Anyways, that’s my tirade. I’ll jump off my soapbox of thought and let you mill that over in your head for a bit.
Live long, love life, big time.
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