When Iâm out with Deaf friends, I put my hearing aid in my purse. It removes any ability to hear, but far more importantly, it removes the ambiguity that often haunts me.
In a restaurant, we point to the menu and gesture with the wait staff. The servers taking the order respond with gestures too. They pantomime âdrinks?â and tell us they learned a bit of signs in kindergarten. Looking a little embarrassed, they sign âRain, rain, go away, come again another dayâ in the middle of asking our salad dressing choice. We smile and gently redirect them to the menu. My friends are pros at this routine and ordering is easy â delightful even. The contrast with how it feels to be out with my hearing husband is stunning.
Once my friends and I have ordered, we sign up a storm, talking about everything and shy about nothing. What would be the point? People are staring anyway. Our language is lavish, our faces alive. My friends discuss the food, but for me, the food is unimportant. Iâm feasting on the smorgasbord of communication â the luxury of chatting in a language that I not only understand 100% but that is a pleasure in and of itself. Taking nothing for granted, I bask in it all, and everything goes swimmingly.
Until I accidentally say the word âsoupâ out loud.
Pointing at the menu, I let the word slip out to the server. And our delightful meal goes straight downhill. Suddenly, the wait staffâs mouths start flapping; the beautiful, reaching, visual parts of their brains go dead, as if switched off.
âWhadda payu dictorom danu?â the serverâs mouth seems to say. âBuddica taluca mariney?â
âNo, Iâm Deaf,â I say. A friend taps the server and, pointing to her coffee, pantomimes milking a cow. But the damage is done. The server has moved to stand next to me and, with laser-focus, looks only at me. Her pen at the ready, her mouth moves like a fish. With stunning speed, the beauty of the previous interactions â the pantomiming, the pointing, the cooperative taking of our order â has disappeared. âDuwanaa disser wida coffee anmik? Or widabeeaw fayuh-mow?â
Austin âAwtiâ Andrews (whoâs a child of Deaf adults, often written as CODA) describes a similar situation.
âEverything was going so well,â he says. âThe waiter was gesturing, it was terrific. And then I just said one word, and pow!! Itâs like a bullet of stupidity shot straight into the waiterâs head,â he explains by signing a bullet in slow motion, zipping through the air and hitting the waiterâs forehead. Powwwww.
Hearing people might be shocked by this, but Deaf people laugh uproariously, cathartically.
âDamn! All I did was say one word!â I say to my friends. âBut why do you do that?â they ask, looking at me with consternation and pity. âWhy donât you just turn your voice off, for once and for all?â they say.
Hearing people would probably think Iâm the lucky one â the success story â because I can talk. But I agree with my friends.
 â Iâm Deaf And I Have âPerfectâ Speech. Hereâs Why Itâs Actually A Nightmare.
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