Becoming Deaf

Before I completed this assignment, I knew it wouldn’t be easy. But the extent of difficulty this project presented me with was quite unexpected. Hearing other students talk about their deaf weekend and the way it was described on paper could not compare to living it. Becoming “deaf” for a weekend not only affected me, it affected my parents, my friends, my trainers, even my horse. Although it was a challenge, I tried my best to live my life as I usually would, without isolating myself in silence in my room, or skipping out on my daily routine. Thinking back to the months prior when I had taught my mom the alphabet and a few basic signs, I internally thanked myself. Even the tiny bit of sign language she knew made the weekend easier. Carrying

around a pad of paper and a pen, and utilizing the people that could sign, I survived a weekend of being deaf.
To begin my weekend, I needed to go see my doctor to treat my sinus infection. I used my pen and paper to communicate with the lady working at the front desk to check in. To my surprise, my nurse knew ASL so it was a breeze to talk to her. Before I went into the room to meet with my doctor, we chatted for a few minutes about me and why I couldn’t talk. However, explaining my symptoms to my doctor was a completely different story. She and I had to resort to using the pen and paper, which worked to an extent, but I had to use my mom as a makeshift interpreter for parts of my appointment. Eventually, she diagnosed me with a sinus infection and sent me and my mom down to the pharmacy with a prescription for antibiotics. The type of antibiotic required a consultation, which my mom listened to and copied down onto my pad of paper so I could see. Then I grabbed the keys from my mom and drove the two of us home. I could see how difficult it was for my mom not to talk to me when I was driving, so I tried my best to drive carefully and remember my blinkers. At one point she broke character and yelled at me because I almost rear-ended a semi-truck that was stopped in the middle of the road. Besides the truck, the trip home was uneventful. Once we had returned home, I went to my room and completed my homework for the weekend. It was quite strange to work in silence; I always drive, do homework, and do almost everything with my earbuds in or my bluetooth speaker on. I quite honestly missed music more than talking. After my homework was done, my mom and I decided to watch a movie. First I watched an episode of Riverdale without her so she could finish up what she was doing on the computer, then the two of us watched Boss Baby. It was very frustrating to watch TV with captions and no sound because not everything is included in the captions. While I was watching Riverdale, any music that was played was not captioned so, unfortunately, I missed out on significant parts of the episode. Overall, the TV experience is extremely boring without sound for most hearing people because we rely on the noise, along with the pictures, to entertain us. My first day being deaf was easier than the others not only because it was not the full day, but because I didn’t interact with as many people as I do on the weekend.
Saturday commenced with my mom shaking me awake and handing me a note that stated we would leave for the barn in an hour.

I completed my usual morning routine, sans music, which was quite strange. Before this weekend, I wasn’t aware of how much time I spent listening to music. The commute to the barn was oddly quiet, with no chit-chat between my mom and I or any pop and country hits being belted out through the car’s speakers. At this point, my mom was extremely frustrated with our amount of communication and the pain she felt in her joints in her hands from attempting to fingerspell everything to me. I was at the barn for around four hours, and everyone that I saw thought there was something wrong with me because I normally talk a mile a minute, but I was completely silent. My jumping lesson with my trainer Carolyne was hysterical to watch. She tried to replicate a trot and canter with her hands, and point to the jumps. Finally, she gave up and asked me to watch the other girls so I knew what the course was. The language barrier made me feel left out and lonely most of the day because most of the other kids at the barn felt awkward around me, and consequently ignored me. Luckily, many of the moms were interested in my project and wanted to learn some signs. A lady named Beth, who is my friend Ally’s mom, is hard of hearing and when she was in her twenties she learned C-Sign, which is a form of ASL slang. When you don’t know a word in sign, you replace it with the fingerspelled word. It was a relief to converse with someone who knew how to sign, and it helped me to stay focused and not cheat. Once I had finished riding the three horses I had been assigned, my mom drove us to Mel’s back in Livermore, where we had lunch. To order, I pointed to what I wanted to order on the menu, then used my phone to ask her to sign the receipt. I also explained why I was acting as if I was deaf. After lunch, my mom and I got our nails done. It was a bit tricky to communicate with

the ladies because their English is not very extensive. However, I showed her pictures of what I wanted my nails to look like, and she replicated them perfectly. After a long day, I finally went home and relaxed for a few hours before going to Chipotle for my class fundraiser. I drove there and, to my surprise, I saw two of my close friends Claire and Jesse and I conversed with them for a while using my pen and paper. While I was turning out of the parking lot, I got a wild hair and decided to use the backroads to get home. Without popping a tire, my mom screaming in fright, or me crashing the car, I survived Patterson Pass. The hour-long drive had worn out my brain, so I ate some cookies and went to bed. I never imagined that being deaf could be so tiring.
Sunday morning came easily, I woke up to the sunlight coming through my window instead of my mom shaking me awake. Twelve hours of sleep left me feeling refreshed and ready to finish my experiment. At 11;00, my mom and I drove in familiar silence to the barn. All of the girls knew about my project, so there were no more nervous faces and confused questioning. I could quickly tack up and ride my horse in peace without transcribing my thoughts on paper for the other individuals present. After my ride, we went and grabbed sandwiches from Subway for lunch and ate them on the way back home. Instead of going straight home, we stopped at Nob Hill to buy some cookies for after dinner. I met Logan and Elizabeth, who both knew how to sign, and we chatted for a few minutes and then they signed my receipt and I drove home.I spent the rest of the day writing this essay and making an extra credit assignment for chemistry. Before I went to bed, I sat in bed and contemplated my experience and how much I had learned in such a short period of time.
All in all, this assignment forced me to think outside the box and step outside my comfort zone, which I really enjoyed. Many of my friends, my parents, and other adults I know praised my commitment to my assignment, which I monotonously emphasized the amount of willpower it required. There were times throughout the weekend where it would have been easier to speak, to just cheat a little bit, but I stuck to my plan and tried my hardest not to cheat. This experience allowed me to take a stroll in a deaf person’s shoes, to understand what they must go through daily because of their hearing impairment. Language barriers are the biggest obstacles, but the few hearing individuals who knew ASL really helped me to make it through the weekend. I am so glad I chose to take ASL instead of a different language so I can be one of those helpful people to a deaf individual. Helping other human beings in any way or form I can has always been very fulfilling for me, and this experience opened my eyes to how ASL can be used to aid others.