As I was getting my morning coffee, I suddenly remembered I didn't write anything last night. Oh, no! Not that there was nothing going on, or nothing to write about.
My friend Mike had a bad reaction to some antibiotics given him. They shut his kidneys down, so he spent Memorial day weekend in the hospital. I visited him, not as often as I would have liked to, but I gave him enough reading material to fight off the boredom of being kept under observation. In turn, he gave me a copy of his latest short story. I'm looking forward to reading it first chance I get. He's home now and on the mend, drinking plenty of fluids. Get well buddy.
Our writing group met, but with Mike on the injured/reserved list, only a few of us showed up. Life is like that. After that, Mike's brother Gary needed help upgrading his computer. So part of my evening went in to adding some memory and putting in a video card. Good thing I remembered to disable the onboard video, or things would have taken a lot longer.
There is a John Deere representative who comes into our store. Often times I'm called in to translate. He reads lips pretty well, but when I came out to the garden, he was having a disagreement with one of our employees. Both of them wanted the same thing, to get some tractors down. They just had different ideas as to go about doing that. His way gave him a little more space to work on the machines out of the rain.
My beef with the whole episode was the way the two of them reacted. He said, 'look at me.' when he was trying to talk. She wouldn't look him in the eye and was blowing him off. There was no middle ground. Signing and speaking the word; 'stop', I was trying to defuse the situation. It didn't work. The female employee went off in a huff. The forklift guy and I continued what needed to be done. And you know what? It worked out fine. I wasn't taking anyone's side because the rep was deaf, I was siding with him because he was right.
It's bad enough when I don't get taken seriously. People generally do take the time to communicate with me, repeat a misheard word. There will always be the one person out of 100 that says,'Why don't you wear a sign or something?'
Yes, someone told me that.
I smiled and explained I was doing the best I could.
My inner voice was thinking: 'Because we were out of earmuffs, bitch.'
I'm normally a laid back kind of guy, but if you get in my face about something, get ready to be hit with both barrels.
You want to say something to a deaf person? Look them in the eye and tell them. Cut the passive/aggressive shit. Don't turn away muttering, it pisses us off.
The hearing world considers me deaf. The deaf world considers me hearing (or at least honorary deaf.) Yes, I deal with both worlds. But the way some people act, I'm ashamed to be hearing some times. There are a lot of insensitive assholes out there, however, the majority of them are hearing people. This does not help bridge the gap between hearing society the deaf world.
My friend Mike had a bad reaction to some antibiotics given him. They shut his kidneys down, so he spent Memorial day weekend in the hospital. I visited him, not as often as I would have liked to, but I gave him enough reading material to fight off the boredom of being kept under observation. In turn, he gave me a copy of his latest short story. I'm looking forward to reading it first chance I get. He's home now and on the mend, drinking plenty of fluids. Get well buddy.
Our writing group met, but with Mike on the injured/reserved list, only a few of us showed up. Life is like that. After that, Mike's brother Gary needed help upgrading his computer. So part of my evening went in to adding some memory and putting in a video card. Good thing I remembered to disable the onboard video, or things would have taken a lot longer.
There is a John Deere representative who comes into our store. Often times I'm called in to translate. He reads lips pretty well, but when I came out to the garden, he was having a disagreement with one of our employees. Both of them wanted the same thing, to get some tractors down. They just had different ideas as to go about doing that. His way gave him a little more space to work on the machines out of the rain.
My beef with the whole episode was the way the two of them reacted. He said, 'look at me.' when he was trying to talk. She wouldn't look him in the eye and was blowing him off. There was no middle ground. Signing and speaking the word; 'stop', I was trying to defuse the situation. It didn't work. The female employee went off in a huff. The forklift guy and I continued what needed to be done. And you know what? It worked out fine. I wasn't taking anyone's side because the rep was deaf, I was siding with him because he was right.
It's bad enough when I don't get taken seriously. People generally do take the time to communicate with me, repeat a misheard word. There will always be the one person out of 100 that says,'Why don't you wear a sign or something?'
Yes, someone told me that.
I smiled and explained I was doing the best I could.
My inner voice was thinking: 'Because we were out of earmuffs, bitch.'
I'm normally a laid back kind of guy, but if you get in my face about something, get ready to be hit with both barrels.
You want to say something to a deaf person? Look them in the eye and tell them. Cut the passive/aggressive shit. Don't turn away muttering, it pisses us off.
The hearing world considers me deaf. The deaf world considers me hearing (or at least honorary deaf.) Yes, I deal with both worlds. But the way some people act, I'm ashamed to be hearing some times. There are a lot of insensitive assholes out there, however, the majority of them are hearing people. This does not help bridge the gap between hearing society the deaf world.
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