Growing up deaf

If you're hearing, you may not have a second thought about what it's like not to hear. 

I was born profoundly deaf, to hearing parents. At that time, only speaking was encouraged (it was called oralism), but my hands felt like they could talk in another language. 

It would've been so easy to sign, not speak.

I wasn't officially diagnosed as deaf until age 4.

My parents treated me the same as my older, hearing sibling, and allowed no special treatment. I had better learn how to work twice as hard as everybody else, they said. 

I thank them for that. They believed I was smart and capable. 

Before I was mainstreamed (placed in classrooms with my hearing peers), I was in a classroom with other deaf kids. The teachers spoke and used sign language both, but they mostly spoke. The deaf kids missed a lot of what was going on around them, because lip reading is effing HARD and the teachers were not fluent in sign language. I missed a lot, too.

(I'm convinced this is why so many deaf/hard of hearing people wear glasses or contacts. It's the constant eyestrain from reading lips all day long.)

At the end of each school day, I was spent. I had only energy to decompress and have a small snack before dinnertime.

Bullying was something the deaf kids did well. They were smart, wily, cruel. They scared the sh*t out of me, threatening to cut me off. I never understood why they hated me but later I understood that they just didn't understand what the hell was happening around us. They also saw me as a goody two shoes, having the ability to speak. They didn't know I wanted to be like them, and NOT speak. 

They acted out of frustration. Anger. Isolation. None of their parents could communicate with them so they acted like animals. Literally. They would make these screeching animal sounds and cup their mouths and HOOT HOOT.

Their parents let them have free rein at home, with no rules or any expectations of good behavior or good grades in school.

Once, on a school field trip, one of the deaf kids stole another's hearing aid and put it under one of the bus tires.

It was only recently that Mama told me a story about one of those deaf students. 

Her name was Cecilia. Her parents were Spanish speaking, from Mexico. My teacher, Mrs. Reynolds, asked Mama to serve as an interpreter in a parent meeting with Cecilia and her mother.

Mrs. Reynolds asked Mama to "tell her [Cecilia's mother] to teach Cecilia how to cook and clean really well, and to keep a house for a man," because she wouldn't be able to do anything else. This was all Mrs. Reynolds believed Cecilia could do, and what's more, she didn't LIKE Cecilia and thought little of her.

Children thrive when expectations are made of them, when adults believe in their capabilities. Cecilia's parents meant well but the communication barrier was tough to overcome and they didn't know how to help their daughter.

But I also blame Mrs. Reynolds. She clearly had favorites, which was a great disservice to those who needed individual attention. When I think about this now, it infuriates and saddens me, because Cecilia was one of the many, deaf or not, who fell through the cracks of the U.S. education system.

I often think about Cecilia and the other deaf kids--Alec, Melinda, LeLe, Tina, Jimmy, Marlene--and wonder where they are now.

I had the opportunity to attend middle school with them but I said HELLZ NO and chose another school.

Which was another kind of hell. But I'll tell you that story another time.

I want to thank @Amy Guttmann-Singer and @Mark Metry for the big push to tell my personal story. Thank you both. ??

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