Yesterday I went out for dim sum with friends in Inner Richmond. It was my first dim sum experience, and it was awesome. I’m still recovering. After the meal the six of us decided to carpool back to the Mission for coffee. Since the Prius we came in only seats 5 (we met 2 people at the restaurant), one person was going to be left out. So, we decided the smallest of us, my friend Kathryn (who also happens to be deaf), would ride in the trunk.
I was concerned about the trunk trip, but apparently she has made the ride back there before. Her boyfriend opened the back and she crawled right in and curled up, like it was old hat. Her boyfriend assures us it’s fine, but to tell her to keep her head down so the cops don’t see. I knew the trunk of the Prius opened like a hatchback so that there was no barrier between her and the rest of us, and I couldn’t figure out why he wanted us to tell her. Couldn’t he tell her?
“What, can she not hear us?,” I asked.
“No, she’s deaf,” her boyfriend told me. And I felt like the biggest idiot in the world.
Later he told me that is how you know you have become comfortable around your disabled friends - you forget about their disability. Kathryn makes it easy for those of us who hear to be around her; she does all the work by reading lips. She’s so good at it, that it can be hard to forget not to talk to her when she is walking ahead of me. Sometimes, she says, even she forgets she’s deaf.
Anyway, it’s not every day I ask if a deaf person can hear me, so I thought I would share.
10 comments ↓
I know! I have a friend who has severe rheumatoid arthritis and I forget that she’s limited in some physical activities all the time. Because I just don’t think of her as disabled at all. But it’s always a nice surprise when I ride with her and we get to park in the handicapped parking spots. Sweet.
You know you’re really comfortable around them when you start sharing jokes about their condition. I know a blind person who has a million great blind jokes. She also knows plenty of good ones about other “handicaps” too, including the one that I still laugh my ass off at after more than 20 years. It doesn’t really work written out; it needs to be heard out loud, but here goes.
Q: How do you sell a duck to a deaf man?
A: (Screaming at the top of your lungs) YOU WANNA BUY A DUCK?
I know it’s stupid, but it always makes me laugh. Maybe having heard it from a blind person makes it funnier for me than it really is.
It’s probably hard to read your lips when you have your foot in your mouth. ;)
I, as you may know, am disabled. I have spina bifida, which is a partial failure for the spine to develop properly as a fetus. I use crutches to walk. At times, I have had a wheelchair handy when I used to live on a college campus (CSU Sacto.), and maybe wanted to go to a Denny’s that was 1 mile or so away from the dorm.
There’s just no blanket way to interact with the disabled, unfortunately (nor any blanket way for me to interact with the able-bodied). These relations are good to attempt (and necessary for those of us who are disabled to attempt), but there’s always trial-and-error, and sometimes unexpected situations.
Ideally, both parties meet eachother halfway, but I always expect to go the “longer half” (answering questions about s.b., or speaking up about what I can and can’t do in a situation, or whatever else I need to do), and apparently so does she. Good, integrationist (if that’s a word) personality.
Feels good to have a solid friend on the other side of “the fence”.
Dim sum is one of those great, quiet secrets in life that tend to alter your worldview shortly after experiencing it. Except it’s probably not much of a secret at all, I just happened to have been allowed into its blessed realm by a tried-and-true Korean. I assumed that I was allowed into the restaurant only because she had brought me as a guest. She also introduced me to those seafood pizza things and that barbecue beef thing that you wrap in a large, trembling lettuce leaf like a burrito.
Cute story.
Remember, before you feel too bad, that I once sent her a mix cd.
^ahahahahaha
pyrimyd *did* send me a mix cd once, it was so hilarious!!
hahahaha
I once honked at one of my students when he was walking down the street to get his attention. I kept wondering, why isn’t he turning around…then I realized…crap! he’s deaf.
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