Driving While Deaf

You know it’s an ignorant hearing world when you take your truck to get the annual inspection done only to find out your truck failed because the horn didn’t work. Well, you know what? No one’s horn works for me, so what is the use.

Can deaf people get a driver’s license?
Are you kidding me?
I kid you not.

Sometimes these questions are presented to me out of curiosity and other times they ask me things out of utter stupidity. I mean, you talk about people using cell phones while driving, which is illegal in some states, or you talk about people who have their boom boxes and amps hooked up to the maximum. Now talk about distractions! Still, many don’t feel comfortable with a deaf person behind the wheel. Go figure.

Will you let me drive?
No, I’m the best driver I know, attentive and alert.

Well any way, I’m driving today down memory lane and I’m passing some experiences that I’m not quite fond of. This is the dark end of the street where I’ve left things to have the dust settle upon them. The first stop I come to is the Texas School for the Deaf where I spent a summer studying to get a learner’s permit to drive.

This was technically the first time I ever really stayed at the institution and I use the word because it’s the word we sign. It was probably the first time I encountered a Deaf of Deaf person. I was, to my recollection, intrigued to get to know how these deaf people walk around with an air of confidence and fluidity in their signing. You see, they didn’t sign with the stress of articulation interfering with their expression of thoughts and feelings. They didn’t care if hearing people gawked at them. They knew they were deaf and had no question about that. They were leaders and they were dominant while many of us were forced to sit in the back of the bus.

So there you have it. I stand at the bottom of the pecking order in public school as a hearing impaired fool. I go to a deaf school and I stand again at the bottom of the pecking order as a deaf of hearing oral boy.

I get back in my truck and drive a few miles down the road to a brighter end of the street and the next stop I make is at the Texas Lions Camp for crippled children. Yeah, that’s what they originally called it. I drive past some good thoughts and treasured memories. I wave to friends I’ve made and to girlfriends I kissed and danced with. It was here that I made friends of all kinds, each of us having a special gift or ability about us.

There were those who could not see,
There were those who could not hear,
There were those who could not talk,
There were those who could not walk,

All of us had a gift, a blessing to offer to the world.

I treasure this stop on memory lane. You see, I spent two weeks out of every summer in my life here from the time I was 8 to the time I was 16 and I enjoyed every minute I was there. I learned about people. I learned about myself. I learned about diversity. I learned about adversity. I grew up loving everyone and their gifts. I learned a lot about deaf children and their parents from this experience and this is more so, now that I am looking back on it all.

Almost all of the deaf kids who went to Texas Lions Camp had hearing parents. It is rare, if ever, that you would see or meet a deaf person from a deaf family at a camp for crippled children. They had parents who didn’t see themselves as being handicapped and they were conditioned with that notion. This enabled them, the deaf of deaf, a stronger sense of self worth in a predominant hearing world.

*sniffing the air*

I hop into the truck again and ignore the expired inspection sticker. A horn, HA! This time I turn around and return to the first stop I made, TSD. Once again the street grows dim and the air feels a little cold.

I get out and remember the day I sat in the cafeteria whilst being grilled by a deaf of deaf about whom I was and where I was from. I remember trying to fingerspell under such an embarrassing amount of pressure only to be mocked and ridiculed for being such a inept signer.

Oh! So it is my fault that I can’t sign for shit?

I remember hanging out outside the cottage with the other students. I sat on a picnic table whilst people seemed to sign about me and look at me and laugh. I look around and wish to find a tree to climb up or a hole to crawl into. Something! Then some brute approaches me and puts his arm around me and does the unexpected. He yells mock gibberish into my hearing aid and ignites a roar from the spectators involved. This cruel deaf of deaf guy then takes his arm off me and mockingly grabs my arm to shake my hand. He looks at me with a devilish grin, the wink of an eye, and with the thrust of his tongue along the side of his cheek he walks away back into the warmth of his little posse of clowns.

I didn’t know whether to stay there and be a joke or to walk away with my tail between my legs. I wanted neither of the two. I didn’t want to hang out with the hearing people and I didn’t want to hang out with the deaf people. I felt like everyone sucked and there was definitely no place for me to build a home for my soul. I remember that day. I was just fifteen years old.

My truck seems to whistle for me so I head back to it and drive off down the road towards the freeway called Life. All the while, I’m thinking to myself about the miles I’ve traveled through the deaf experience and my understanding of deafhood. I ponder on the things that either make us or break us. For some people, they open their arms to others in the deaf community and for others they want nothing to do with the deaf community. There are also those who spend their whole lives, like me at fifteen, with no place to go, no place to belong. They become isolated in their own little world and resort to a destructive lifestyle, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Now with the advent of our awareness of words like audism and deafhood, these very people have gathered their armor, arms, and artillery with the intention to retaliate back. You see, it is easy to remember the insults from hearing people but it is easier to remember the hostile insults from those who are like you. So, as a result, they spend their energies attacking their own kind because it is easier to side with the majority than it is to attack the majority because victory in that manner is more likely to happen.

-Sigh-

My truck is cruising at 55 down Life’s highway and as I’m driving while deaf, I keep my eyes peeled for other people who are looking for their deafhood. I am prepared to help them find their way home because we all deserve that much.

We deserve a sense of belonging and by that I mean we deserve to be together as a whole in a world that knows little about the Song of Silence.