Be Careful Of What You Wish For
It’s nearly Christmas, and I’m sure many are wishing for many things on Christmas day. When it was discovered that I was deaf as a baby, my parents wished for me to have language. Their wish came true, often to the chagrin of the adults around me.
One day Jack, the audiologist stopped by to make ear molds for us deaf preschoolers, and most of us disliked the feeling of the goop being squirted into our ears. So when we saw him, we immediately scattered. When it came to my turn, I immediately started running, my ribboned pigtails flying behind me, with my little dress whooshing with each move I made.
Janet, who was the teacher, shouted at me every time I looked back at her, “Come back here and sit down! Let Jack make your ear mold!”
I ignored her pleas and kept running. She attempted to corner me and bawl me out, failing each time. Finally on the umpteenth attempt, she grabbed me and sat me down on the chair, “Now you behave and let him do his job!”
Glaring up at Janet, the pig-tailed four year old me in a dress exclaimed, “Bullshit!“
So you see… be careful of what you wish for sometimes, because you just might get more than what you bargained for. 
A Piece of the Puzzle
While reading Amy Cohen Efron’s post late last night, I couldn’t help but be struck by the deep irony of what she was saying. She faintly echoed what Ryan Commerson, I believe, was trying to say in his film, Re-Defining Deaf. And Amy faintly echoed what I said a long time ago on DeafDC.com, that the hearing world tended to view us as a caricature, because they see us only as that deaf person.
As the blogger of The Deaf Edge, I’ve become more and more conscious of that fact. Being on such a visible level, it becomes too easy for many to see merely one puzzle piece that we’re presenting to the world, and think that shows the entire picture of who we are. And so they try to hammer the interlocking edges of their puzzle into ours, while we scream in agony, “No! Not that one! This one!” Or they try to rip out a piece of us, because the edges are too colorful, too sharp, too discordant… It doesn’t fit into the puzzle that is thought to be our stage.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
- Shakespeare
But the beauty of this is that ultimately when a piece is created, an interlocking piece is also created. We just have to find these interlocking ones without a script, by our own means, and that’s what makes the stage so great – the improv act on it.
Crazy Job Interviews
Taking a break from studying for my final exams here – I thought I would share an amusing story. You know that as a Deaf person who speaks American Sign Language, sometimes you get into really odd situations, both personally and professionally.
One day, I went to a job fair with a friend of mine. It was pouring that day, and naturally, being absent-minded, I didn’t bring an umbrella. My friend dropped me off in front of the building, which was a convention center, but the doors were locked! The doors that were open, were at the other end of the building. So I walked through the pounding rain, to the other end. Once I got inside, my hair was drenched and plastered to my face. I had to wring water out of my hair!
So I’m standing there, vainly trying to fix my hair and wiping the raindrops off my black leather jacket when the interpreter showed up and said, ‘Wow. You’re just a little wet, aren’t you?’
With a smirk at her, I headed to the first booth and the woman manning the booth very clearly looked up and down at me. I thought to myself, ‘Crap. I knew I should’ve brought an umbrella!’
I smiled politely at the woman and handed her my resume. She took a quick glance at it then looked at the interpreter. “Are you her mother?”
The interpreter and I exchanged glances, and I said, “Um. No. She isn’t. She’s just an interpreter.”
The woman smiled brightly, “Oh okay! So what are you looking for?” So I went into my usual job seeking spiel, and the woman listens studiously. Then she asked randomly, “Where do you live?”
“Um. I live here. Around here…” I mumbled in confusion. The woman said, “Okay. I was just asking because our business has several offices in different cities,” then she went into her spiel about what her business was about.
Then she ends it with, “You know, you could work for us… We could hire an interpreter for you, and you could meet with our clients and help them with their finances, and such!”
By then, I was dumbfounded. This was not your typical job interview, and I was looking for a clerical job. I also knew something was up, because most people would run away screaming if they had to hire an interpreter for a Deaf person to work with clients. So I said, “Mm.. Okay,” not knowing what to say.
“All right. I’ll give you my business card, so we can set up things for the job orientation and such.”
“Okay.”
She took out her business card and begins to write on it, then paused. I’m looking around while she’s doing this, mind you. Then I saw the interpreter flinch for just a second then she signs to me, “You’re such a beautiful woman.”
I stared at the interpreter, ‘What the Hell?’ clearly written on my face.
The interpreter shook her head ever so slightly then nodded towards to the woman, “Her! Not me!”
With wide eyes, I look back to the woman, who now was standing very close to me with a smile and business card in front of my face. I stammered with a smile, “Ah… Thank you,” then quickly took the card and left.
It’s now several years later, and I still wonder if that woman did that because she found me irresistibly cute, which I find hard to believe, or because she thought I was Deaf and easy to pick up… 
