Sleepy Greetings

It’s 10:30 on a Saturday morning, and I’m ready to start the day. I go to wake up my boyfriend, Tyler, gently pushing on his chest.  

“Honey, it’s time to wake up. Let’s go!” 

He grumbles and grunts, rustling the sheets and not opening his eyes.  

“Sweetie, wake up!” 

I shake his shoulders very slightly, just enough to slightly rouse him. 

Still asleep, he turns over to face me and just slightly lifts his head up. Without ever opening his eyes, he brings his fingertips to his chin, palm perpendicular to his body, and his thumb tucked in. He then collapses onto the bed and lays there, almost lifeless. 

For people that don’t know sign language, what he just said to me was “bitch.” 

I sat in bed with my arms crossed, giving him the dirtiest look I possibly can, even if he can’t see it. I play games on my phone, waiting for him to wake up.  

He finally wakes up over an hour later, and I stare sternly at him, with my lips pursed and my brow scrunched. 

“Excuse me, Tyler. Do you remember what you said to me this morning?” 

He looks at me, confused. “No, what did I do?” 

I cross my arms and tell him, “You called me a bitch in sign language.” 

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This Isn’t My Job

My boyfriend, Tyler, and I have decided to go to a deaf luncheon. My mom helps plan the luncheon each year and my uncle is president of the organization that hosts the luncheon, so I figured that it could be fun. Tyler has never been around this many deaf people at once, so I know it’ll be an interesting experience for him.  

As soon as I walk in the door, I’m being pulled aside by mom and another volunteer, because I’ve been offered up as an interpreter. I’ve been told that the person who was supposed to interpret is going to be here late, so now it’s my job to interpret Frosty The Snowman while they put on a skit. I’m not prepared to interpret in front of over a hundred deaf people and I want to hide somewhere. My 15 year old cousin, Frankie, keeps laughing at me, knowing how terrible it can be to be offered up as an interpreter, even though he’s fairly young.  

I’m in a back room with the deaf dance team, trying to figure out how the hell to sign this damn song. Another woman heads into the room with us and I’m told that she’s an actual interpreter. She takes a shot at practicing the song, trying to see if she can figure out how to interpret it.  

She’s doing a hell of a lot better than I could have done and everyone is fawning over her. If this was something I actually cared about, I would be upset, but this is my worst nightmare and she’s saving me from it. 

“Don’t be insulted, I do this for a living and I’m a professional interpreter.” 

I can’t help but laugh at that. “That’s absolutely fine. I’m just a CODA.”  

I run out of that room and back to our table, so freaking happy that I don’t have to interpret for a bunch of people that will absolutely judge me if I do this incorrectly.  

The interpreter does amazing in front of everyone, and Tyler leans over to me and says, “Yeah, she’s a lot better than you would have been.” 

Some people may consider that to be an insult, but I know it’s just the truth and I’m not even a little bit insulted. 

Tasty Treats

My mom and I had decided to go to Dunkin’ Donuts as a treat to ourselves after a long day of errands. I’m nine, so this is the most amazing thing that could happen to me. We look at all of our options, and I’m feeling rabid for sugar. I can smell the sweet dough in the air and my stomach is screaming at me.  

I turn and sign to my mom. “What do you want me to order?” I’m already used to being an interpreter for her and am fully aware that I am her voice in public. 

“You choose anything you want for both of us.” She smiles at me, knowing that this is a dream come true. 

Even though I’m young, I’m very conscious of the eyes on us as we sign to one another. I don’t mind much, but I don’t really understand why everyone feels the need to stare at two people communicating. 

I walk up to the counter with my mom, eyeing the chocolate donuts. The man behind the counter looks at me with sad eyes and greets me.  

“Hi honey, what can I get for you two?” 

I tap my fingers on my chin, not really sure why I am, I just know that I’ve seen people in movies do it while they think.  

“I would like the double chocolate donut and the chocolate donut with sprinkles, please and thank you!” 

He grabs the donuts and hands them to us and my mom pays, while I examine my goodies. 

“Don’t leave yet, give me one second.”  

The man turns around and grabs another donut, while I translate what he said to my mom, both of us standing there, confused.  

He hands us a chocolate glazed long john, which I add to my treasure. 

“I’m sorry your mom can’t hear.” 

“Okay, thank you!” 

My mom and I walk out and she asks me what had just happened. I knew that this situation was weird, but I was too young to understand just how weird this was. Things like this happened fairly often, and it wasn’t until much later that I had understood that I was being pitied for my parents being disabled.

Learning to communicate pt. 2

So I had written about my experience learning how to speak and sign, but I wanted to talk about the opposite of that. My parents are still learning how to speak to this day, because they often mispronounce a word, so I teach them how to speak. I mostly do this with my mom, but if she can’t say a word correctly, we’ll sit together and I’ll slowly say the word and have her copy me. If that doesn’t work, something that she’ll do is put her hand on my throat while I speak and compare the vibrations from my vocal cords to her own.

However, there’s also another side of learning to communicate. By that, I mean that my hearing friends have to figure out a way to communicate without just relying on me to interpret. I often forget that not everyone understands my parents, so I don’t always interpret for friends until they struggle to understand and it clicks for me. One example I have is of my boyfriend. In the 3.5 years that we’ve been together, he has recently gotten much better at understanding and figuring out other ways to communicate other than just having me be the middle man.

Superpowers

In my personal experience, I’ve always noticed that since my parents were deaf, it was always like their other senses were extremely heightened. I’ve briefly talked about this in another blog post, but they would smell my chocolate the second I opened the wrapper and know I was sneaking candy.

Even now, they both can smell things that I can’t at all. We do have to take the garbage out slightly more than I’d like to, because my parents can smell any garbage even with a scented bag and hiding the garbage can under the sink.

Besides having a super heightened sense of smell, they didn’t have many other superpowers, but they used that superpower extremely well. It was usually to catch me feeding my sugar addiction, but as parents it was the best superpower they could probably ask for.

CODA Habits

There are a lot of things that I’ve noticed I do because of the fact that I’m a CODA. They’re mostly just a bunch of random little habits that I’ve picked up over my 25 years of life and how it’s all influenced me.

One thing I do often is sign to myself. Instead of talking to myself, I’ll subtly sign or finger spell my thoughts or a song that’s on my mind. I’ve already mentioned this in an older blog, but I often finger spell words so that I can visualize how things are spelled. Even as I’m typing this, I actually caught myself signing my thoughts to myself instead of typing and deleting everything.

Another habit that I have because of being a CODA is that I visualize things different than most. What I mean by that is that when talking about a certain place, I’ll point in a direction that may not be the actual direction of where that place is. That’s because of sign language in general and how places are referred to. While signing, you don’t need to point in the exact direction of where you’re talking about, but instead you place it somewhere and visualize it in front of you. After placing it in front of yourself, that’s where it lives. This is fairly hard to explain in just a blog and it can be confusing to people who didn’t grow up like this. It’s actually something I only recently realized that I even do, because I’ll often point in a direction when talking to my boyfriend and every time I do that, he gets extremely confused because it’s not how hearing brains work.

Assistance

There are some things that are available to help deaf people with everyday life that many hearing people aren’t aware of. The first one that I wanted to bring up is closed captioning at movies. There’s actually a few options for closed captioning. The first one is that there is a device that shows subtitles for whoever is holding it. The other option is that many movie theaters have special showings of movies with subtitles on the screen.

Something else that I wanted to talk about is alarm clocks. Many people may wonder how alarm clocks work for deaf people since it’s not like they can hear the screaming beeps. What my parents have used is a little device that you put under your mattress and instead of beeping, it shakes the entire bed. We also used to have other things like flashing lights for the door bell or phone, and flashing lights for when I’d cry as a baby.

Deaf Events

Growing up, I knew a lot of the deaf community in the suburbs, and that’s because of something called the Western Suburban Assosciation of the Deaf, or WSAD. WSAD is a huge community with lots of fun events for deaf people, and it was the only time I ever communicated with other CODA’s.

There were two events that I looked forward to every year. There was a big deaf picnic during the summer that I always liked, and it was how I ended up meeting one of my good friends. The other was candlelight bowling. Every year around Christmas, WSAD would host a Christmas bowling party and it was what I looked forward to every year.

WSAD is how my parents have also met a lot of their friends because there are a lot more deaf events than you may think. There is a deaf bowling league that my dad is involved in, there’s a big deaf day at six flags, and deaf ice cream socials. I haven’t been to a deaf event in many years, but I remember loving them as a child and I remember being really excited to go to everything every year. These events are a great way to immerse yourself in deaf culture, and there’s even a huge deaf expo at Harper College every year that I definitely recommend checking out if you’re interested in this world!

Animal Behavior

Something that I think is really interesting is how animals interact with humans and how they adapt to certain things. You may be asking what this has to do with either deaf people or being a CODA. Well, throughout my life, I haven’t had many pets, but when I was in high school, my dad adopted some cats.

When I meet other deaf people that have animals, I like to ask them if they think their pets know that they’re deaf, because my cats absolutely know that my dad is deaf. They love my dad and they know exactly how to get his attention. They still meow at him, but they know that he won’t be able to hear them, so they will always reach up and tap on his arm with their paws. I don’t know many other cats that do that with hearing people, but these cats have adapted and know that tapping is the best way to get attention.

A few years ago, I was cat sitting for my dad, and at the time, the cats didn’t have free range of the house and lived in my dads bedroom. It was fairly late at night and I woke up because they were running around the room and jumping in boxes. I woke up and turned on the light and yelled, “Hey! I can hear you!” Since then, they know that I can hear and have even adapted to that.

Getting Permission

So, as I’ve said many times before, growing up was very different for me. For example, my mom or dad couldn’t just pick up the phone and call me out sick from school. They would have to use the TTY and relay service that I mentioned in another blog post and call that way. Something that I contemplated many times was calling myself out of school since no one could truly prove that it was me and not my parents. I was always way too scared to do that though, so I was a mostly good kid and went to school.

One experience that I had difficulty with was when I was 17 and in the car with friends when we got into a pretty bad car accident. All my friends were able to call their parents and have them tell the paramedics that they didn’t need to go to the hospital since none of us were badly hurt. However, I couldn’t do that. I had to have my mom actually come to the accident, which luckily was only a mile away from my house. I’ve had a lot of experiences with things like that, where I have to do a lot of explaining that my mom can’t just get on the phone and give permission for something. I remember being really happy that we weren’t far away, and that my mom could easily drive the five minutes to me.

I’ve had a lot of experiences where I have to pose as my mom on the phone because the phone company or whoever I’m talking to for her won’t let me make decisions or changes for her, even though she’s deaf and can’t just get on the phone and authorize something. I definitely understand the reasoning, but at the same time, it can be a hassle. Although my parents being deaf has always been an easy way out of a telemarketer conversation. I would always answer the phone and when they asked for a parent, I’d say they were deaf and I would always get lots of apologies and a quick end to the conversation.