This Wednesday will mark my SECOND class in ASL. I am 55 years old. I was HoH throughout most of my school years, gained a 'respite' by the time I was 13 via surgery: my hearing was rendered good enough to enable me to even join the Army at 18.
But during service, my hearing worsened again; and I have worn hearing aids since I was 23, after further surgery at a VA hospital actually cost me my hearing in one ear.
During grade school, I went through years of my parents, teachers and others attempting to determine what my difficulties were: was I vision-impaired? Learning-impaired? Did I need speech therapy? I was ten before someone realized I might have hearing issues. Obviously, the immediate solution, once my problem ,(or should I phrase that in quotations, my "problem"?), was identified, was surgery.
I was not only raised in an Oral culture: I was raised ignorant of the very existence of anything like a "Deaf Culture". One person I have read would classify me as a HoH 'Solitaire', someone cut off from the Deaf/HoH community and experience.
I am not entirely certain I realized that there were still people who used sign language as a regular means of communication-although I did teach myself to fingerspell, just to sharpen my skills as a 'secret agent'.
At 23, I went through three months of virtually complete deafness, at least within the spoken range of sound. But not even during that relatively brief period of time was I ever made aware of a subculture of Deaf people. Nor during four years of college at a regular, private university--studying SOCIOLOGY, a field oriented to the discovery and analysis of sub-cultures--was I aware of anything like "Deaf Culture".
The film, "Children of a Lesser God", followed a couple of years later by the "Deaf Prez Now" thing made me remotely more aware of the Deaf community---but by that time I was out of college, working, and getting along OK with hearing aids within the Hearing/Oral world. I was fully integrated as a Hearing person and in fact almost never even identified myself of job applications or other forms as 'disabled' or 'impaired'.
Practically the only time that my status as HoH was explicitly ever mentioned was when I tried to apply for a position in a correctional facility: I was told it would be 'unsafe' for both my prospective colleagues and myself if I could not hear well enough to detect an impending physical assault.
Fast-forward some 25 years: as I became aware a couple of years ago that my hearing in my remaining ear is declining, I happened to briefly interact with an interpreter at a client site which works with several Deaf employees. The 'Terp, realizing that I am HoH, encouraged me to consider learning ASL. My schedule in those days was irregular, but I filed away the idea as one of those things to put on my 'bucket list'. UNTIL THIS YEAR, when I landed a permanent and regular schedule at about the same time I learned of some affordable classes in ASL.
It was ONLY in prepping to take this class, about three months back or so, that I really became aware of 'Deaf Culture'. And I have to wonder: were my interests and my field of study not directly part of the social sciences, would I have paid any attention to the discussions in most books and websites on ASL about Deaf Culture? Would I have cared enough to have even noticed?
My point in all of this: a lot of people who come late to Deaf Culture do so because they are utterly ignorant for much of their lives that such a thing exists. For Deaf folks to be 'cliquish' and deliberately exclusionary toward late-deafened and late HoH folks is not really fair to the latecomers.
Of COURSE those of you who went to Deaf schools will share aspects of that experience unique to yourselves and not to those who went to mainstream schools or whatever. So do folks who go to Yale, or to Harvard, or to West Point, or to the USMC Boot Camp, etcetera.
Another thing: I attended a Deaf social this weekend, just a few days following my first ASL class. I met there a Hearing person, married to a mainstreamed Deaf woman whose ASL skills are somehat rigid (if I recollect rightly). He and she go to as many formal and/or public Deaf events as possible: but he noted, not resentfully but somewhat wistfully, that his wife and he are often 'left off' of invitations to more spontaneous, casual gatherings of Deaf folks in their area.
They are seen by other Deaf folks, even Deafies who account them personal friends, as somehow not quite 'Deaf enough'. And so, not always included in "Deaf' activities.
(I supposed there could be other things going on here--his wife has a number of health issues related to her Deafness, for example, and perhaps folks fear she often could not come or would not be able to enjoy the activities due to her limitations--but I sensed there was pain in the fact that they were often not even remembered or invited).
These are some of the consequences of a mentality that classes some people as 'not Deaf enough'.
Worth reflecting upon, methinks.
Those of us late to the party, so to speak, do need to try to learn and be respectful of Deaf people and Deaf culture. But Deafies would do well to try to be welcoming and helpful and understanding of what late-Deafened/HoH and Solitaire Deaf/HoH may have experienced by not having had early exposure to Deaf culture.
