Ask a deaf guy anything

[iThrillhouse]

Side note.

There should be an Ask A Blind Guy Anything thread.

 

[iThrillhouse]

on a serious note anyone posting questions should seriously read the entire thread before doing so!

Quit a great interesting read!

My one question, what is the deaf community's relationship like with other impaired communities like the blind? or is there even one

 

[AncientEnemy]

Would acid be boring to a blind person?

I had a buddy admit to me that he did acid once. Really random. Said it didn't do anything and he was just bored.

Acid wouldn't be boring to a blind person. The best visuals come from a blank slate

 

[White Mongoose]

After being deaf for most of your life, if someone could offer you the ability to hear would you take it?

I ask this because I read an article about a blind man who was given the gift of sight after 40+ years of blindness and became so depressed by the world that he killed himself 2 years later. I wouldpost a link to the story, but I am on my phone.

Actually no I wouldn't for the reason other poster explained.
However for some, it can be the greatest thing ever. It really depends on how they live and how much hearing they have left. Or if they start very young.
But since I pretty much live in absolute silence, don't use my voice much, and other things, it would just be a bad news for me.

Yes as much as it could shock people, but getting a sense back could almost be a curse.
The best way to describe it would be like waking up to find out you can read someone mind even if you don't want to. It may sound cool but in realistic it would suck so bad.

Have you ever done mushrooms or LSD?

Nope. I have done marijuana and hated it. I have nothing against it and don't care if people smoke it. However for me, it suck. I end up go all limpy, unable to keep track of anything, can't carry out a conversation, or anything.
Also I'm a really bad drunk (which is why I don't drink).
So I can't imagine how those would affect me and sure don't want to find out.

 

[White Mongoose]

on a serious note anyone posting questions should seriously read the entire thread before doing so!

Quit a great interesting read!

My one question, what is the deaf community's relationship like with other impaired communities like the blind? or is there even one

Thanks, I'm really glad that so many are enjoying this thread.

As for your question, we don't really interact with them unless they are also deaf. Not sure why though. However my theory is, they feel like they have to live with one disable already and try to navigate the hearing world. So the last thing they want is to try deal with other people disable as well.
Yeah kinda assholish I know... But that's how it is.

Since you asked about that, here's a story I heard once.
Sometime back in 70s or 80s, a school for deaf and blind which normally keep them separated (I attend that sort of school for a year once and only saw blind people like twice in whole year and one of those time was when I was going to see nurse in a building between two campuses) made a decision to try integrate them together.
The deaf students was absolutely against it especially since the idea was to force the blind and deaf students to partner up so they could learn how to depend on each other for each other's advantage and eventually become less dependent on others.
That may look great on paper, but remember, at this kind of school, the students would go there on Sunday evening and stay until after the school on Friday then be sent back home.
So by partnering the deaf students up with the blind student, the deaf students basically have to guide the blind students around and be their eyes. The blind students have to learn how to sign and be the ears for the deaf students. To make things worse, the deaf student have to put their hands in the blind person's to spell things out to communicate with them which take incredibly long time.

Now imagine being forced to partner up with someone you have to pretty much baby sit and have to help them all of the time and stuff which would greatly restriction your activity, force you to divide your time between deaf crowd and the blind crowd and list goes on.
It end up being a huge disasters. Deaf students would start to arrange furnitures frequently so the blind person would bump into them when try to count their steps, lead the blind person so they bump into things, place things on the floor so the blind students trip over them, lead the blind students to somewhere so they get lost, and many other things.

Needless to say, the whole idea doesn't even last a month before everything was return to the old way.

I have never been able to confirm this to be true. May be some sort of deaf urban legend. However I can try to look into it if anyone is interested.

 

[argy-bargy]

Acid wouldn't be boring to a blind person. The best visuals come from a blank slate

Yeah, for somebody with normal functioning eyes a 'blank slate' can be great. But if your retina or optic nerve are damaged severely you aint gonna see shit, no matter how hard you trip. Your thought patterns would be crazy as ever though.


Also, White Mongoose, I'm sorry for ripping on your spelling in another thread. I feel like a real dick now.

 

[ToastFaceKilla]

I'm just going to agree with white mongoose on the deaf community being very very small.

 

[Irenaeus]

I don't know if you want it, but you have my sympathy. If I had to chose, I'd rather be blind than deaf. Sound is so incredibly important for socialization.

Which caused me to wonder: Have you ever tried to communicate with a blind person?

Meeting people! It is incredibly frustrating! It is extremely difficult to make friend, get a date, get a job, and all sort of things. People often end up acting really awkward and question everything. It suck!!! To make it worse, I try to get out of house as much as possible. But I often would try to decide if I want to try and make myself invisible just to avoid awkward situation with people or if I want to try look more approachable than others in hope people would at least make some effort to carry out conversation with me.

One of my colleagues has a deaf son. He's about 21 now, and since about age 16 he has used most of his time playing WoW. When he lived home, his father had some say, but now it's very difficult to excert any influence over him. Now, this kind of thing happens to all sorts of people, but I've always wondered if his impairment (and the social isolation it can lead to) is a large part of the equation. Any thoughts?

Not really a question, but I once held a small series of lectures in which a deaf girl attended. For the lectures, two translators were made available to her, to facilitate communication. I got the impression that she was a good and hard working student in general, but like any student she overslept, even if it only happened a single time. And as a consequence, three people - two translators and a trainee - sat and looked annoyed, bored and frustrated for the first thrity minutes of the lecture. She was incredibly embarrassed and apologetic when she arrived. I thought it was a little funny.

In general, it was an interesting challenge, as I'm kind of a rapid-fire lecturer, and I had to adapt and slow down to make the job managable for the translators. I can't really imagine meeting such social challenges constantly (as deaf people have to) without it having a significant negative impact on my quality of life.

 

[destructive]

Lol I went through the entire thread and the "can you hear in your dreams?" Was asked three or four times.

Bless your heart ts. If I take an asl class would you help me ?

 

[oyaji poi]

BTW here's a major tips to anyone who own business... Words get around scary fast in deaf community and they rely heavily on words of mouth.

I think you mean..."word of hand"...


or "sign of hand"


??

:icon_conf


A few people asked about you dating hearing girls - but have you dated other deaf girls? Do deaf people usually hook up together?


Also, I read an article about a deaf guy who talked about realizing he is deaf. His family never taught him sign language, they just hit him to get his attention so he just figured he was dumb and his family mostly ignored him.

When he was in elementary school he was put into a "special" class for developmentally slow students. Finally he realized that people were communicating with each other by moving their mouths and that they were doing something he couldn't perceive. He was very frustrated up to that point, but eventually he learned ASL and how to read English and has done well for himself - but I thought it was interesting to realize that you're deaf.

 

[madizm2]

If someone clapped your ears in streetfight, would it have any affect on you?

When you're driving can you feel the vibrations of an ambulance or firetruck siren? Or do you have to constantly look in your rearview mirror?

When it comes to deaf babies (i.e. newborns), can a doctor simply look in a babies' ears and tell if it's deaf? Or does the doc have to run a series of tests?

Are some people born completely deaf?

 

[koolinkunming]

Thanks, I'm really glad that so many are enjoying this thread.

As for your question, we don't really interact with them unless they are also deaf. Not sure why though. However my theory is, they feel like they have to live with one disable already and try to navigate the hearing world. So the last thing they want is to try deal with other people disable as well.
Yeah kinda assholish I know... But that's how it is.

Since you asked about that, here's a story I heard once.
Sometime back in 70s or 80s, a school for deaf and blind which normally keep them separated (I attend that sort of school for a year once and only saw blind people like twice in whole year and one of those time was when I was going to see nurse in a building between two campuses) made a decision to try integrate them together.
The deaf students was absolutely against it especially since the idea was to force the blind and deaf students to partner up so they could learn how to depend on each other for each other's advantage and eventually become less dependent on others.
That may look great on paper, but remember, at this kind of school, the students would go there on Sunday evening and stay until after the school on Friday then be sent back home.
So by partnering the deaf students up with the blind student, the deaf students basically have to guide the blind students around and be their eyes. The blind students have to learn how to sign and be the ears for the deaf students. To make things worse, the deaf student have to put their hands in the blind person's to spell things out to communicate with them which take incredibly long time.

Now imagine being forced to partner up with someone you have to pretty much baby sit and have to help them all of the time and stuff which would greatly restriction your activity, force you to divide your time between deaf crowd and the blind crowd and list goes on.
It end up being a huge disasters. Deaf students would start to arrange furnitures frequently so the blind person would bump into them when try to count their steps, lead the blind person so they bump into things, place things on the floor so the blind students trip over them, lead the blind students to somewhere so they get lost, and many other things.

Needless to say, the whole idea doesn't even last a month before everything was return to the old way.

I have never been able to confirm this to be true. May be some sort of deaf urban legend. However I can try to look into it if anyone is interested.

This is very interesting. I believe my uncle attended one of these schools (he's legally blind) and mentioned learning sign language with a deaf guy, and he would have to hold his hand to sign, etc. He actually enjoyed the experience. Too bad overall it doesn't work though.

I was a phone operator for a while, doing 411, 0, 911 calls, and also for the deaf. It was a very interesting experience. Some deaf callers could speak to a hearing person, some hearing people had me type to the deaf caller, and calls where both callers were deaf...I found that 99% of the calls I handled the deaf callers did pretty well with spelling, grammar, etc, so it was at least legible.

 

[koolinkunming]

Sometime. One thing I hate the most is when I'm standing with a group of people and they just completely ignore me and doesn't make any effort to communicate as they are babbling away. It is much worse with family.
That's biggest reason I usually spend time by myself. Luckily for me, I'm a introvert, so being lone is much more comfortable for me.
But it do get frustrating from time to time, but I think it is pretty normal for everybody.

Haha, this is my experience living in China too. My ex-wife and her family would sit there and babble on in their dialect like I wasn't even there, while forgetting that I understood everything they said. But being an introvert as well, I kind of like it. It's just when people talk really slow or act like I'm stupid or something that I get bothered.

 

[MarloStanfield]

it doesnt matter if she says NO its all systems go!

 

[nerf]

I volunteered at a centre for deafblind people and had to learn at least some basic Malossi alphabet. Most of them weren't born with those conditions and weren't all able to communicate well. On top of it, it was over the summer holidays so those that were there were the ones without a family to go back to. A truly changing experience, but i remember it as a fun one too. I was struck at how "normal" they were in they're daily life, loving soccer or reading braille books. In my experience though those that were "only" blind went really out of their ways to make life easier for the rest.

So blind 1-0 deaf, sorry bro

 

[Other]

Is TTY still around?

I had a deaf friend in high school and would talk to her on TTY. It was definitely an unusual experince. Go Ahead.

 

[White Mongoose]

Also, White Mongoose, I'm sorry for ripping on your spelling in another thread. I feel like a real dick now.

No worry, it's all good. It is just a lot of people asked, so I thought I'd just start this thread so I don't have to answer every time somebody ask if English is my native language.

...

No sympathy necessary. Honestly I think I have a pretty damn awesome life and am quite happy. It is just that there are some social issue that I really struggle at. Looking at other deaf people, I think I have it way better than most of them.

However I just hope that this thread increase awareness toward those who are deaf or disabled. I just hope that if anybody here ever bump into a deaf person, they at least would try to be more understanding and give them a chance instead of just act all awkward and avoid them.

As for communicating with a blind person, I have communicated with a deaf and blind person a few times. It take a lot of patience and it can be somewhat awkward. I have had a deaf friend who was in wheel chair, I have had a amaputee deaf friend, I have been around deaf people who aren't mentally developed and others. I just can seems to find a lot in common between us and something both of us are interested in.
However for blind and deaf person... It just isn't the same. I would still talk with them no problem and I don't avoid them or anything. It is just... personally I cannot really see myself being their close friend or anything. I'm so active, very visual, and always want to get out to do things. Kinda hard to do that with a blind and deaf person.
As for straight up blind person... We both are pretty much nonexist to each other to be honest. I don't know braille, I cannot read lips or anything. The blind person cannot see me gesturing or read the writing and I cannot speak that well. Put us both in a situation together and I'd probably see myself end up wander away and deal with the situation on my own as much of a asshole as it sound...

About your friend's son... Can he sign? Did he mainstream his whole life or was he sent to school for deaf or what? Did his parents sign? Who are his buddies? If I have answer to those questions, I would be able to answer much better.
Without the answer, I'm just going to say that I suspect the parents don't sign so their communication are really limited and I'm almost 100% sure he mainstreamed. However the question is, do he go to school with few other deaf students or was he just thrown in hearing school?
If he was just thrown in hearing school, then I'd say he have a poor social skill to began with (even if he can hear, he probably would be one of those "awkward kid" with no social skill) and he just end up become so reserved and no body ever made any effort to communicate with him or anything. Over the year, he just think no body want to talk to him and he never had any luck with making a friend or anything like that.
If I'm wrong and he go to school where there are few other deaf kids, then he must have been the outcast among deaf students (I was pretty much one...) and he made no effort to fit into the hearing world.
Either case would lead him to feel like there's nothing out there for him and probably is incredibly depressed and lonely. So he turn to the only world that he feel like he's treated equal which is WoW. He have every ability, can talk, understand others, and get to work with other and do things with others which is something he never have in his life outside of WoW.
Quite sad case...

About that deaf student, yeah they tend to have two translator so one can take a break and other one take over every 15 to 30 minutes. As for the third person, that's rather bizarre, I have never heard of such thing.
As for her overslept... Well disability resource at college are far far from being nice or your friend. They are one of the biggest reason I dropped out of college. It is a lot of work to get everything set up with them and if you do anything wrong then well... they are gonna bend you over and fuck you really hard and make you smile and thanks them afterward. So I sympathy her...
Working with a translator does take a bit adjustment because they have to process everything you say and translate it into signing and their hands can only move so fast. So that's why you have to slow down lol.

Lol I went through the entire thread and the "can you hear in your dreams?" Was asked three or four times.

Bless your heart ts. If I take an asl class would you help me ?

Lol yeah it kinda surprise me.
Thanks, yes I would. I tend to not like to teach others how to sign because most people aren't serious about it. However if someone actually take a class then I do try to help.

 

[White Mongoose]

...

Lol deaf people would talk like if they are hearing. Even if they were told something in signing then later they want to tell other deaf person what they heard, they would say "I heard that..." or whatever.

About dating deaf person. Overwhelmingly vast deaf people only date other deaf people. Some are even very against the idea of deaf person dating a hearing person.

Hell one time I was hanging out with this girl I use to see and she was trying to sign to me and I was having bit of difficult to understand her when a older deaf couple come up to me and ask if we're deaf. I explained the situation, they act all nice and talk with me for a bit then at the end, the deaf lady say "Hey... about that girl, you should dump her, deaf girls would be better for you" I want to get up and knock that bitch out so badly, but I just smile and nods because I don't want my girl to know what was being said as it may discourage her from trying to sign.

Personally I have never dated a deaf girl. Remember how I told you being part of deaf community is like being part of small city? Well it is not unusual for your girlfriend to be a ex of your best friend and maybe two other friends and your ex could be your best friend's girlfriend or ex. Plus deaf community feel like they should have part in saying over who you date and stuff hell some even would try to steer two deaf people toward each other and stuff like that.
Since I grew up in the hearing world pretty much and am a introvert person, I don't like the idea of having the whole world having their nose in my business and knowing that few of my buddies have already fucked my girl.
So I only date hearing girls which unfortunately have a whole other problem of its own lol.

Shit I just read the next part of your question. I realized that I have dated a deaf girl once. However she was in exactly same situation as the guy you were talking about. But she can read lips and talk so well that people often don't know she cannot hear at all.
She never learn how to sign or anything and avoid deaf community like plague. No body in deaf community even know of her at all.
But yes it is a quite interesting sitaution, a sad one as well though.

If someone clapped your ears in streetfight, would it have any affect on you?

When you're driving can you feel the vibrations of an ambulance or firetruck siren? Or do you have to constantly look in your rearview mirror?

When it comes to deaf babies (i.e. newborns), can a doctor simply look in a babies' ears and tell if it's deaf? Or does the doc have to run a series of tests?

Are some people born completely deaf?

Yes, even though I cannot hear, I still have ear drums and yes I do feel pressure in ear if I go high in the airplane or deep under the water.

I have to constantly look in my rearview mirror because I am in a car and the engine vibrates which would cancel out my ability to pick up any other vibrate unless something fall in the car.

When it come to babies, they usually cannot tell if the baby is deaf until certain age (I forgot what age) As for the test, I remember it have something to do with seeing how baby react to sound. However it isn't always accurate. I have a friend who have three deaf boys and the doctor says they all were hearing until one of the boy was about four years old then they learned that all the boys was deaf.
However, no doctor cannot look into person ear and tell if they are deaf. The doctor usually have to send the person to specialist for a test.

Yes some people are born completely deaf.

...

Yeah it is hard for deaf person to want to be around the blind person, especially if they have to be their eyes and go through all efforts to communicate and stuff. Glad to hear your uncle have a good experience though.

I'm a bit confused, you say you were phone operator. If you talk to someone who was deaf through other person, you basically use a relay system, it is the translator who talk to you and they would change sentence from signing to ENglish. So if that's the case, thats why it seems good.
However if you go onto a deaf forum or something, you'd see how bad their English are.

So blind 1-0 deaf, sorry bro

LMAO yeah I don't blame you. Many deaf people are so bad about try make others life easier. They think that everybody in hearing community should learn how to sign and stuff.
I have headbutted with those people so many times. My PoV is... we live in the hearing world, so we have to adapt to them, not the other way around.

Is TTY still around?

I had a deaf friend in high school and would talk to her on TTY. It was definitely an unusual experince. Go Ahead.

LMAO I hope not! That system went outdate in a hurry about 10 years ago. However there may still be some very old fashioned deaf person around who use it but I can't imagine how it would be useful nowaday unless they have a landline and are communicating with someone else who also have landland and tty.
Hell I don't think any company even sell such device any more.
In short, it would be like your grandfather still writing a letter eventhough he can pick up a phone and make a call or send a email.
Plus that system was awful!!! Many people would hang up if they receive a call because it is so unbearable annoying!

 

[hoonosewot88]

Good question! There are even accent in sign language and they have different slang in each area too! That's other major reason signing could be incredibly hard to learn. People would learn sign this way so when they see somebody with slight different way, they would get frustrate and think the other person is doing it wrong.
Vast majority of USA and Canada use ASL (American Sign Language) which is pretty uniform across the countries. But each area have their own minor adjustment, slang, and accent, but nothing major.

I did a course in BSL (British) a few years ago so i could communicate on a basic level with signers, and my first chance to put it into action happened to be with an American who signed ASL.

Totally different, we basically couldn't communicate at all. It made me wonder why they didn't just implement a universal sign language, but i guess it's for the same reasons their isn't a universal spoken language.

 

[Uchi Mata]

What if anything does music mean to you?