Day 1 - Part 5: Non-signing Friend Time

One of the things that anyone who is part of the Deaf community or who has ever taken an ASL course will tell you, is that Deaf people looooovvvveee to talk to each other. Whether they know each other or not, if you put two Deaf people in the same room, they will find each other and they will talk to each other about anything and everything.  I never really understood why - until now, that is.

I just had coffee with one of my best friends, Elisa. She and I went to Starbucks and grabbed our drinks, and then sat down at a table and.... realized we couldn't talk to each other. I can't hear, she can't sign, and it's a problem. I made very good use of the memo-pad I bought this morning, and we were able to communicate in that way. As you can imagine, however, this was far from efficient.  We spent most of the time trying to figure out how to concisely say what we would normally just ramble about. It was, as she pointed out, a little bit frustrating. Of course, as any friends would, she took almost no time to start really enjoying the fact that I can't hear or speak.  While we did have some struggles in figuring out how to communicate, though, we did overcome them to an extent - at least enough to communicate somewhat.  However, I must say, I certainly look forward to spending time with people who know ASL.