Day 2 - Part 3: Secret Signers

I realized that I never actually explained how it is that I have temporarily (and quite effectively) deafened myself.  I ordered high-quality foam earplugs online (that get rid of up to 45 decibels of sound), and bought much less high-quality wax-earplugs (the kind that you would use to keep water out of your ears) that block 22 decibels of sound. After putting the foam earplugs in, I then capped them off with the wax earplugs, smoothing the wax out so that it both masks the fact that I am wearing foam earplugs, and holds them in place. The two combined actually do block out pretty much all sound. The exception is incredibly loud things, such as the jackhammer at the construction sight that I walked past this morning. Even these loud sounds are hard to hear, and are often difficult for me to identify.

I find that I am finally really getting used to not being able to hear people or traffic, or really anything at all. I have learned to look for visual signals on things that I would have relied on sound for in the past. For instance, on my bus ride today, I watched for the light of the "Stop Requested" sign to light up rather than expecting to hear the binging sound every time someone pulled the cord to get off. I also have learned to look not only left and right when crossing the street, but also behind me for cars that may be approaching and planning to turn. (I learned to do this after nearly getting hit by cars trying to do this.... twice..... Apparently it's something that I never really noticed before, because I would only look if I heard a car behind me.)

And now on to the title of this post - "secret signers." Today my trip to center city resulted in my visiting one of my favorite stores, Buffalo Exchange.  (It is pay day, after all!) I went in and was waiting for the dressing room. I was going to try on some clothes in the dressing room. While I was waiting for a changing stall to open up, someone bumped into me. I turned as common social etiquette demands, to do the typical mutual apology thing with the mystery klutz. I signed "sorry" they gestured something like "no, i'm sorry, it's fine" or some variation thereof, and we moved on. However, the man at the changing stall must have seen this happen, because much to my delight and shock, instead of speaking to me, he turned and signed "How many?" when it was my turn to enter the changing rooms. I signed the number 7 (in ASL, not in Toddler-language), and he then signed to me, "Let me know if you need anything." This Secret Signer, as you can imagine, made my day!

It occurred to me yesterday that one of the reasons being Deaf in a hearing society is so hard, is that you can't see it like you can other physical differences such as an inability to walk, or blindness. There is virtually no noticeable physical difference between a Deaf and hearing person walking down a street. But today I realized that neither can you see the ability to sign. It's just something that society expects people not to be able to do, unless maybe they or a loved one is Deaf. It was a very humbling experience in which I realized that I may need to re-think how I go about thinking of people in general - particularly strangers I meet for the first time.