... a deaf conversation

She sat across the table from me, telling me a story. As her hands moved to and fro, a graceful ballet of hands, I sipped my coffee and tried not to break my gaze, lest I miss a word.

Her fingers were slim, her nails trimmed to her fingertips. She eschewed the long nails that were fashionable for some women. Her hands were used to working, they were not soft and pink. She was a hard working woman, I knew that. Her nails were painted black today, and they struck a contract to her white skin.

Her face was round, with long eyebrows arching over her hazel eyes, framed by long, brunette curly hair that needed some gel.. A smile that looked like a smirk played over her face, as she related the tale of a late-night party that seemed to get out of hand. The police were called, even! Imagine a bunch of deaf people saying, "The music was too loud? I didn't notice."

Her brows knitted together, forming three vertical creases in her forehead, as she paused to remember some other fact of the story.

We were sitting in a booth at a restaurant we frequented, enjoying coffee and talking about our day. Some looked at us, as we brandished our hands, lancing through the air, communicating in sign language, not speaking a word.

The waitress was aware of us deafies, so she enunciated each word. We pointed at the pictures on the menu of what we wanted. I typed someting on my phone and showed it to her, a specification of how I wanted the eggs cooked.

Later, after breakfast, a couple came up and excitedly showed us that they were trying to follow our conversation, by looking up the signs on YouTube, where they had a deaf dictionary. We smiled and nodded encouragingly as they gushed over our "beautiful" language. We could read lips like experts, having been born deaf and living among the hearing.

I said, "Thank you!" though it came out like "Dang zoo". I couldn't hear the words I spoke, only felt the vibration in my throat. That was how my mother, who was hearing, taught me different words, by  placing my hand on her throat and saying them. So the vibrations went with the lips moving. I didn't really lean to use my tongue to enunciate a word, only mimiced the sould it made.

She said, "Zoo kin lerd sigh languash too!" Yes, it's not that hard. Practice makes perfect.

Please don't make fun of us for how we sound, we sound perfectly normal, and we are perfectly normal. We just can't hear, that's all. It's just another cultural difference to accept.