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You also obviously haven't been deaf long, and are not involved with a lot of deaf people, or you would know this is pretty common.I think this is still on topic. Where do you "see" the public has the view we're lazy and mooching off the system? Even when I heard as was part of the corporate world, I was not that part of the public to whom you're referring. None of my hearing friends see deaf as leeches. When I landed on SSD, the few friends with whom I interacted said, "Good for you." Frankly, I was embarrassed but followed the rules set by SSA and was applicable. "They" were my friends and knew what I had done in my life.
TX: Sometimes being deaf is sad depending on where you're coming from. As a hearing person and many moons ago, I watched a deaf friend venture out (we worked at a major corporation) and it was scary to me out of my own ignorance - not stupidity. I quickly learned she was fine. I've worked with a deaf people over my career that ended due to my own deafness catching up with me.
I'm the treasurer for our owners association (Excel does not speak back to me, so it's something I can do and contribute) and one of the young men dropped off the bill for maintenance work for the month. I'm not sure how I learned this from him or what made him say it but he is a veteran (young fellow) whose hearing was "shot up" by guns. He is now on SSD and working part-time. I didn't see him as a lazy good for nothin' guy. He seems sweet and very capable of speaking and hearing. But, so what that he's on SSD.
You're not in my shoe (or moccasins), so you can't "speak" or write for me. I vacillate between being okay with being deaf and being petrified. Going from very HoH to deaf FROM living my life hearing illicits very different feelings about the deaf.
AngelEyes1: I'm being redundant and it's what I do. You do what you need to. I agree there's a problem when you set, what is perceived as stringent rules, as a way out of work. While I was able to turn down that 24/7 on call job, I knew I'd find another job quickly and did. But that was in a different lifetime, it seems. I'll be the first or second to say that I'm not walking in your moccasins. What some of us in this thread are attempting to do for you is ask you to walk into SSD knowing what you're facing and ask yourself if what you're running from worth it...
Cheers,
-- Sheri
Lots of people on both sides.
You might possibly like to start out in the late deafened thread before telling all deaf people how we must think and behave...