Say it like you mean it.

There are definitely some funny moments when you're dealing with deaf culture. The ASL influence on the culture is that people are very, very blunt and it's always a good time when you're watching someone new to the culture experience that. And by blunt, I mean about everything. There's just no...prevarication...in ASL. There isn't any way to circumlocute your way around saying, "Yes, that dress makes you look fat." (Ahem. I'd like points for prevarication and circumlocute, please. Two words you'll never see in ASL, by the way). Anyway, there's no polite way for saying stuff. You just tell it like it is. "You look fat in that dress." It's not intended to be rude or hurtful. It's the nature of the language. You can kind of only say exactly what you mean.

But there are other odd little things, too. I don't remember if I blogged about this before, and if I wasn't an utterly lazy woman I'd click on my archives and figure it out, but I grew up doing a lot of things that I thought were normal that it turns out...not so much. For example, I didn't realize that everybody doesn't flick the lights or bang on tables to get people's attention. And it used to be that if I wanted people to move out of my way, I just put my hands on them and moved them. My husband says I still do this sometimes but I don't believe him.

There are odd turns of phrase I picked up, too. I called my sister a few months ago after a conversation with my husband and said, "When you need to buy food, where do you go?"

"The food store."

"Ha! That's what I said, too. Did you know no one else goes to the food store? They say they're going to the grocery store."

"What?"

"I know! We've been ASL'd!"

The idea that other people don't call it "the food store" surprised my brother, too.

And we keep our eyes open during prayers too, because we're used to seeing them signed. That still discomfits my husband. (Points for discomfit, please.) And on the subject of all things holy, sacrament meeting in a deaf ward/branch is the LOUDEST CHURCH AROUND. Parents have no idea if their kids are being noisy or not so there's no shushing. One time I was sitting in sacrament meeting and I kept hearing this periodic, ethereal singing. I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. There would just be this kind of angelic, wordless "Aah ah ahhhh..." series of song notes. I tried to figure out if there was some correlation to whatever the speaker was saying, but no....just these random spurts of singing. Finally, I realized what was going on. A little girl had an Ariel Little Mermaid doll and every time she pressed it, Ariel sang. You know that part where Ursula is capturing her voice in a seashell necklace? And Ariel sings, "Aaah ah ah, ah ah aaah!" I felt better that I wasn't hearing imaginary voices.

One of my favorite things is deaf applause. Do you know how deaf people clap? They stick their hands in the air and flutter their fingers so you can SEE how they feel, since hearing is moot. It's pretty cool.

In fact, I'm fluttering my fingers at you right now...

So this confession is honest but it may not make you like me better. It's the true story of how it was.

I definitely resented my parents at times, not necessarily for being deaf, but for some of their choices. I mean, I understood that they had no control over being born deaf, but they could hear well enough to make things tricky. My dad had a profound hearing loss which means total nerve damage, but through a series of blessings given to him over the years, he functioned far better than people with lesser hearing losses. My mom had a severe hearing loss. She could maybe hear 20% of what was going on around her. She and my dad were both raised orally, meaning with intensive speech therapy and no sign language, so they were master lip readers and speakers, and extremely competent at understanding content based on context. They both learned sign language in college and switched to that as their primary form of communication, but their ability to speak and lip read...well, sometimes even I got suspicious...

I mean, were they really deaf? It seemed sometimes like they could hear when they wanted to. As a kid, I often wondered if they were faking being deaf and just tricking us so they could get us kids to do more stuff for them. As an adult, I found out that my younger brother and sister had the same suspicions.

As it turned out though, they really were deaf.

The resentment came from having to do a lot of things that other little kids never had to do, and since I'm the oldest, most of it fell to me to take care of. It's pretty easy for deaf people to communicate now, what with email and Blackberries and video relay services. As a kid, I didn't have any of that stuff to bail me out. At six years old, I would have to call and make doctor's appointments or handle calls to my parents if they couldn't understand the person on the other end. With their hearing aids and the special volume control they had on the phone, they could get by most of the time, but they needed me often enough for it to wear thin, sometimes.

As I got older, the resentment came from other things. These are the choices I mentioned. We never did sports as kids because my parents didn't have the money and my dad's health was too poor to invest in something like that. However, as we grew older, my siblings and I (there's just the three of us) got involved with things in high school, especially academic stuff. I went to the national mock trial competition with two different states (Louisiana and then California) and they never came to see one match, not even at the county level. My dad said they would be bored without interpreters.

It really bothered me. I felt like it was kind of beside the point. I figured the point was just to show up and be there, but they didn't see it that way. My brother kind of felt like that too. I guess over time we learned to shrug it off, but not completely. It still bothers me, sometimes.

Also, we attended a deaf branch when we moved back to California. It was awesome for my parents because they finally got to participate fully in church and I was happy about that, but we got tapped to interpret a lot in church when there weren't enough adults to go around and sometimes...we just wanted to be kids, to enjoy youth conference without having to interpret for a classmate or whatever. Most CODAs feel this way at some point.

There were compensations, though. My parents died two years ago, but I have rich memories of them centered in the language of thought, which is probably the best way to explain ASL. There are things you just can't explain in English that are so easy to get across in ASL. I have great memories of my mom explaining the origin of certain signs to me in a way that made them indelible, and I bet no one else has ever thought of the same explanation. I'll always remember how lovely she looked when she led the congregation in hymns every Sunday, her hands tracing out concepts about God and glory and grace in the air, painting the clearest picture. I'll always remember the way my dad's face would move so expressively, perfectly conveying his thoughts which is an earmark of ASL. I'll always remember his contributions to spreading the gospel in the deaf community. He and his three companions were the first LDS missionaries called to teach the gospel to the deaf, and in later years he worked on helping the Church translate the scriptures into ASL dvds.

So in yesterday's question, Josi asked how I reconciled the issue of their deafness in my life and how it relates to me as an adult. The answer is that in hindsight, they did their best, but sometimes the load was heavy and as children we were asked to shoulder a part. I don't think it's anything different than what many children have done for their parents whether it's because of a disability or a language barrier. And I know my life is far richer for the experience.

Thanks, Josi, for asking the question. I think later this week I'll revisit deafness once more for the time being to share the lighter side too, because believe me, there are some funny things about deaf culture and growing up in it. And maybe even later, I'll share a little more of the tought stuff, too, but honestly? It all shook out all right, you know?

Eh, what's that, you say?

So Josi asked me a total fluff question: I want to know at what point in your growing up years did you realize that you're parents were deaf and that most parents were not? Also, did you ever fear you were going deaf as a kid? And did you get made fun of, and how did you deal with that? I'd love to hear how you personally came to accept that issue in your life and how it relates to you as an adult.

Geez, Josi. Could you throw me a bigger softball?

Let's see...I'm betting I probably realized there was a difference when we moved to Louisiana from California. In California, we attended the LA deaf ward and all of my hearing friends had deaf parents, too. I wasn't old enough for school yet so there was no environment where I would see anything different. Louisiana was different. My parents were the only deaf Mormons around. I started school. None of my friends had deaf parents. I began fielding a lot of questions about why they were deaf and how I learned how to talk, all that stuff. There was no single moment where I remember an epiphany but I'm guessing that's how I eventually figured it all out.

I don't remember fearing going deaf, only because being deaf didn't seem like that big of a deal. My parents were both educated, successful, respected professionals with friends and hobbies and a nice house. There's nothing bad about that. In face, when my oldest son was born, he failed the newborn hearing test twice. The nurse brought him back after the second one and tried to reassure me that he'd probably pass at his two week check up so I shouldn't worry.

"But if he doesn't pass, does it mean he's deaf?" I asked her.

"It might," she answered. "Don't worry, though. I'm sure he'll pass."

I shrugged. "I don't care if he's deaf," I said.

She looked appalled. Her expression clearly suggested that she thought maybe that the baby shouldn't be going home with me later that afternoon.

James's dad laughed. "Don't be a dork, Melanie. Tell her."

I grinned. "My parents are deaf," I said. "It's really not a big deal if he is, too."

She looked much relieved.

So, no, I never really feared becoming deaf. Besides, it's not genetic on either side of my family. It's rarely hereditary, actually. I think the figure is down near 10%.

I don't ever remember being made fun of, or of my parents being made fun of, either. People have always been more fascinated than mean. It helps that my parents were both articulate and easy to understand. I do remember several times where adults (cashiers, counter agents, nurses, etc.) were impatient or uncomfortable in dealing with my parents. That made me super angry. Often, I would refuse to help them (the other adults) talk to my parents, so that they were forced to deal with my mom or dad instead of coming through me and treating my parents as inconvenience. My parents always got a kick out of that. I stepped in where there was a genuine problem or disconnect, but only if the other adult was truly trying to communicate to begin with.

However, just to be clear, even though my parents' deafness was normal to me, that doesn't mean I didn't resent it sometimes. It's natural for us CODAs, Children of Deaf Adults. Most of us carry a certain resentment for a while. But I think I'll save that part of the question for tomorrow.

I also haven't forgotten the other questions some of you guys asked (Nancy, Erin, etc.) and I'll answer them, too.

I feel like I should have a more conclusive ending to this post today.

But I don't.

The End.

Is there a problem, officer?

This one time, I was bored of college so I decided to go live with my *Pawpaw for a semester because the food was a lot better at his house. The food is a lot better at any Louisiana house, to tell you the truth. Not that the BYU Cougareat didn't have its moments, but usually I just wandered through the bookstore and grabbed a bag of chips and a soda and pretended I was walking off the calories by eating them on the way to class.

After that semester was up (which involved me getting a huge room to myself, working part time, spending hours and hours reading books from the library and spending the rest of the time watching my pawpaw cook and then eating it so I don't really know why I went back to school, ever), my dad came to drive me back home to California and then send me back to school.

So we packed up my little Dodge Shadow and hit the highway, and somewhere on a Texas interstate, I woke from a sleep in the back seat to find my dad pulling over to the side of the road while cop lights bathed the car interior with a friendly red glow that said, "Gotcha, sucka."

"Melanie," my dad said. "I'll need you interpet."

He didn't. See, my dad was deaf. Actually captial D, Deaf. Any audiogram would show him as stone deaf. But his speech never gave him away. You'd only catch on if you saw his hearing aids. He had magical lip reading powers. He could function just fine in a conversation with anyone without an intepreter.

In fact, his deafness only seemed to manifest itself when he was about to get in trouble. Too bad my mom was deaf too or he could have pulled that on her more often.

So he did not need me to interpret, most definitely not from the back seat, and mind you, I was the WORST intepreter EVER. I have improved over the years to "pretty crappy."

But he reached up, turned his hearing aids off, and waited for the officer to come to the window. Then he made me sign everything the cop said into the rearview mirror. Then he would answer the cop, sounding confused. Then we would repeat. Then the cop wandered back to his cop car. Then he came back and said, "Tell your dad--" and when I started interpreting he said, "You don't have to sign this until I leave. Just tell your dad to slow down."

The dude didn't write the ticket becuase he didn't feel like waiting for the interpreting to catch up! And he walked off.

And my dad kept his vaguely confused expression in place until the cop was in his car. Then he switched his hearing aids back on, pulled back on to the highway, and smiled.

"I love being deaf," he said.

I think I said a swear.

*Pawpaw is what anyone in Louisiana calls their grandfather, because "grandpa" sounds weird, whatever you guys may think.

Oh, and Emily Lesher won the giveaway! You can read the post below for the details.

La, la, la, la, la...I can't hear you!

So bunches of people, maybe four-and-a-half, were kind of fascinated when I mentioned my parents were deaf. Apparently, it's bad form to drop that into a blog post about firemen ogling your underwear and not explain.

And so you guys wanted to know all about growing up with deaf parents.

Here's a list of weird stuff I do because my parents were deaf:

1. I flick the lights to get people's attention.

2. If you are in my way, instead of saying excuse me, I will just move you out of the way.

3. I usually forget to close my eyes during other people's prayers.

4. I just found out that my brother, sister and I are the only hearing people in America who say "food store" to refer to the grocery store. It's an ASL thing.

5. I have an overly expressive face. Gargoyle-ish, in fact.

So now you know. I didn't know this wasn't normal until I took a Deaf Culture class in college. Then I was embarrassed as years of strange looks from regular people registered and I understood things like that the way to get someone's attention is not to pound on a table. So now I know. And sometimes I remember. But mostly not.