Deaf Night At The Mall
Well we went to Deaf night at the mall last night. Something interesting happened there. We wound up meeting a recently Deaf person who is very frustrated because he knows no one and he comes from New York (where I am originally from) and he learned sign language from a community of Deaf people up there. Some of the signs he either self-taught or was taught very different than what we’ve been taught in ASL - I’m talking about the basic signs too. Not being an expert - but knowing enough to know he was doing the very basic signs wrongly - I helped him by making the necessary corrections… Luckily for us he knew how to lip read well - but he needed to be able to communicate and he was frustrated. I made introductions for him - I introduced him to John who is Deaf and used to teach ASL and I introduced him to Danny and his wife Velma and also the Pastor of the Deaf Church at The Mall as well. He kept saying “I don’t know anyone” and I kept refreshing his memory that he now does - hopefully he’ll come back every month and we’ll get him more comfortable with the local Deaf community and he’ll make some close friends. All in all we had a very good time last night at the mall - looking forward to the next monthly “Silent Dinner” at the mall!