Moving Hands

Every now and then, I encounter somebody who expects me to carry a small notebook everywhere for the purpose of communicating with others. In their mind, it is simplest for d/Deaf people to communicate with others by writing things down. It’s a nice sentiment, but life isn’t that simple.

One thing that I’ve learned, living in this world, is that hearing people are a lot more complex than you’d think. Because hearing people hold so much power in this society, it was tempting as a kid to lump them all under this category of ‘hearing’ and to attribute them with supernatural abilities – like being able to speak to each other across state lines without a telephone.
But I learned early on that hearing people have a wide spectrum of abilities. A kid in my class had mirror-writing, my friend’s brother was dyslexic, my friends hated to read. Just because they were hearing and native speakers of English didn’t mean that they actually liked English. Not every hearing person is able to relate to written English; for some people, words on a page are meaningless jumbles.

This lesson was driven home when I lived in a major metropolitan area during college. I was functionally deaf because the sheer loudness of everyday life compelled me to give up my cochlear implant during my leisure time; I just didn’t want to hear traffic and horns honking and subways and yelling people all the time. I had forgotten how to live as a deaf person, so at first, I tried to get by with a pad and pen. But then I learned my childhood lesson again: not every hearing person relates to written English.
A lot of the time, when I tried to communicate with store clerks by writing to them, they didn’t understand what I was saying. Moreover, it wasn’t culturally acceptable in that city to communicate in that way – “speak English, damn it!” was the predominant attitude.

So, in the real world, especially one that is so audio-centric, it’s not realistic to expect that one can communicate with pen & paper all the time. I personally have found other ways to communicate, like learning society’s scripts (“Would you like fries with that?”) that I feel more comfortable with.

Another thing is – what if the d/Deaf person is uncomfortable with written English? I personally love English. But, as with hearing people, d/Deaf people have a wide range of aptitude with regards to English. The d/Deaf person may be dyslexic or simply not interested in English or something else.
In addition, some Deaf people are not native English speakers. I know plenty of Deaf people who regard English as this alien language that feels very uncomfortable; for them, compared with ASL, communicating in English is as awkward as trying to chop vegetables with a baseball bat.

I mean, if a d/Deaf person genuinely prefers to communicate by pen and paper – that’s great! Everyone should be able to communicate in whatever way they feel most comfortable with. But there’s a difference between recognizing that some individuals prefer that method of communication versus expecting every single person to adopt that method.

For the record: yes, I do carry around notebooks. But that’s because I enjoy writing in them. Simple as that.