As I prepare myself for immersion into another culture, I thought I'd reflect on my tiny insight into the American Deaf Culture and share a story. As a hearing person I can only imagine what its like to be deaf. I consider ASL [amercan sign language] a separate langauge from English and I think many deaf people, CoDA's [children of deaf adults] and audiologists agree. This alone is enough to separate deaf people from hearing people culturally.
Read More...I took one "Manual Communication" class in college. We learned Signed English and studied a few different forms of sign language. ONe assignment had us pretend to be deaf in a public situation that required some kind of interaction with hearing people. I took my friend, a CoDA, to CVS Pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions. As my hands jogged around in broken ASL to my friend, an employee behind the counter blatantly stared at us. I walked up to the counter and smiled, the pharmacy tech looked at me and sort of started to speak. I just kept smiling politely and pointed to my ear and shook my head in an attempt to communicate my fake deafness. The employee who continued staring at us yelled "Ooo he deaf!" The tech looked slightly agitated and I handed over my license. She took it and began to locate the prescription. It was going too easy, I decided to mix it up a little. When it came time to pay I tried sliding my debit card the wrong way. The tech who had given me the prescription saw I putting the card in the wrong way and leaned over the counter and jerked the card out of my had and slid the card the correct way. I looked up at her, smiling, but less politely, and she sighed and stared down at her computer. I took my bag of medicine and waved in reluctant appreciation and walked out.
I thought, what the hell, if I had been a spanish speaker or some none native english speaker, the tech would have at least made some attempt to communicate with me. I felt like I was just written off by the tech, I felt like I was being treated like a child, incapable and stupid.
I also work with a deaf man. The other people in my office are just now attempting to learn sign. Since I started working with him my sign has improved unbelievably. I can now carry on simple conversations with him and talk to him about work and his life. Often I had to relay details of what he was saying to the hearing people in the office. For the most part they communicate by writing but the nuances of conversation are lost on paper. I started noticing that in situations where everyone in the office was talking in an impromptu meeting the deaf man just stood or sat around, not uncomfortably but definitely isolated from us. I wanted to remember what it was like for me and him in that group. When I am in Japan, I am going to be somewhat like him in that meeting. I don't speak japanese enough to participate in any kind of conversation so I'll be pretty isolated in Japan. I think I'll find out what those meetings were like for him as an American in Japan.
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