Take It As A Sign

a creative writing post (#20)

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Context: this is another real story from my actual life, but I put it in the creative writing series so I can tell it how I want, with flowery descriptions, unlimited digressions, flashbacks, and other creative writing techniques, and have no need to follow the standard conventions of essay writing.

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I am deaf, but that doesn’t mean, as it does to many hearing people, “what’s a sound?” Rather, I use the word “deaf” as most people with hearing issues do. It’s a dividing line between people who can use the phone without technological help and people who can’t. If I keep losing hearing, I’ll qualify to get cochlear implants eventually, timing dependent on whether the rate of loss stays the same. (The surgery to implant CIs destroys all residual hearing, so it’s very difficult to get approved for it so long as hearing aids are still providing a reasonable approximation of a normal life.)

Before I moved to a state where I qualified for Medicaid, I knew only that I was losing more hearing every year, so I started integrating myself into the local deaf community. I never got fully fluent in American Sign Language, but I got very good. Slow, much slower than native signers, but fully able to initiate, follow, and understand conversations.

I don’t get to use ASL much anymore, and I miss it. I am no longer a believer, though I sometimes think about going to church, to find community and meet good people. The reality that I don’t believe in any gods and would end up having to talk about that unimportant fact is what mostly stops me, but still, I think about it. I think about it a lot. If I ever summon the courage to go, I’ll definitely pick one with a deaf ministry; churches are the best place to meet both ASL users and hearing people with an understanding of hearing loss.

Yesterday, I needed to get a tire repaired or replaced. I arrived at the automotive repair shop, got checked in, and was waiting outside while they ran the test to see if they could repair it or if I’d need a new one.

A minivan pulled up, quite old in obvious disrepair. It had a handwritten “temporary tag” in the back window. The man driving it got out and opened the back door of the minivan. Two children bounded out and started playing together, boisterous but friendly, under a nearby tree. The woman in the front passenger seat got out and stayed near the children, mostly paying attention to her phone but looking up occasionally.

The man leaned against the front of the minivan, stared at the building, and grinned like it was a mansion he had just finished building with his own two hands. Nobody went inside to ask for service on the dilapidated van, or for any other reason. They all just waited outside, the man continuing to stare as if the building was his own personal heavenly mansion.

This intrigued me, so I used the pretense of looking at my own phone to spy for a bit.

The man seemed normal, aside from being extraordinarily happy. The woman was engrossed in her phone, but also keeping an eye on her children. The children, a girl of about 6 and a boy of about 9, started to provide more information.

The girl waved at her big brother in a manner that was meant to re-direct his attention. It did, and she grunted before frantically signing at him. I wasn’t completely sure, but I thought I saw “my turn.” This was followed by the grammatical indicator for “past,” the girl pointing at him in annoyance, and the number 3. In the closer-to-Chinese-than-English grammar of ASL, this is roughly how “you’ve had 3 turns!” would be rendered.

ASL uses a convention called “facial punctuation,” which means that the facial expressions that go with what a person is communicating are a crucial part of the language. A hearing person might say, in a neutral tone and perfectly calm manner, “You’ve had three turns; it’s my turn now.” A deaf person would only sign such a thing with obvious indicators of annoyance or even anger on his/her face, as the corresponding facial expressions are a crucial part of the meaning of each sign.

The little boy told her he was sorry and she could have three turns now. His facial punctuation was perfect, a look of genuine regret followed by the look that might go, in a hearing child, with putting a birthday present on the table at a party while knowing it was exactly what the guest of honor wanted and would be their favorite, favorite toy forever.

I grinned. The kids were deaf, or possibly hearing with deaf parents, but native signers for sure.

I was taking a couple of deep breaths and psyching myself up to introduce myself to the parents and get their permission to talk to their kids when an employee from the repair shop walked out.

He was somewhere between 17 and 20, with shockingly blond hair. His uniform was dirty from a day’s work, but had obviously started the day pressed. He went directly to the man, whose look of rapture only got more intense, and they started signing. The young employee told his father that he was learning how to patch tires, could they wait awhile longer? The father assured him that they’d be happy to wait; he should go learn as much as he could. (In ASL grammar, this was something more like YOU GO LEARN US WAIT ME VERY HAPPY). The young man grinned and signed “thank you” in a somewhat exaggerated manner, which I took to mean something like “thank you, this is so important to me and I’m so happy.”

Before I could get my courage up to sign, though I had managed to move significantly closer to the family by wandering around a bit and looking at my phone a lot, another employee walked out to tell me about my tire.

I took this as my opening, signing as I spoke. “This gentleman’s son said he was learning to patch tires, so I assume you’re coming to tell me I don’t need a new tire, just a patch?”

The father looked as if, in addition to a mansion on the streets of heaven, he had just been told that the street—the whole neighborhood—was being renamed after him.

He started signing, at the speed of light. I think, though he went so fast that I wasn’t sure, that he was asking me for my name, name sign, was I deaf, hard of hearing, did I have CIs, and did I know his son, all at once.

I asked him (signing, silently) to slow down. I said to the employee (out loud, signing) that I would be in to pay in just a minute. Then I returned my attention to the father. His children ran over, noticing a new person signing, and after a minute so did his wife.

I was rusty to be sure, but a lot of my ASL came roaring back. Aside from asking them to slow down, I got almost everything.

The details of their story are not mine to share, but I’ll say this much: the young man’s new job was making his parents prouder, and more hopeful, than they’d been since the government overreaction to COVID destroyed their lives. And his young siblings had never even imagined that someone who can’t hear could have a job “doing math at a big company to help them understand their business and make better decisions.” When asked several questions by the boy, I clarified that “yes, they have such a big company that they have numbers from business all over the world, and when they need to know how to make better choices, they ask me.”

The boy looked as if I had just offered him a ride on a rocketship to Mars.

Maybe, in the long run, it will turn out that I did.

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This is from the creative writing series that is typically limited to paid subscribers. I unlocked this one on a lark because I was remembering this day, happily. If you would like a paid subscription but cannot afford one, email hollymathnerd at gmail dot com.

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