Awsome and positive hearing people stories

That's cool Derek. I'm big into cycling too and a post you made gave me an idea regarding cycling and a friend to enjoy a common interest so I placed an ad to see if anyone is interested in a cycling buddy. Maybe we can exchange skills (asl/bike maintenance).

The thing with the way my life has gone is that I've gone 44 years and have never really met a Deaf person. Honestly I don't understand how this could happen.

I'm about 2 1/2 hours from Grandville.
 
xc700 said:
That's cool Derek. I'm big into cycling too and a post you made gave me an idea regarding cycling and a friend to enjoy a common interest so I placed an ad to see if anyone is interested in a cycling buddy. Maybe we can exchange skills (asl/bike maintenance).

The thing with the way my life has gone is that I've gone 44 years and have never really met a Deaf person. Honestly I don't understand how this could happen.

I'm about 2 1/2 hours from Grandville.
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Feel free to send me a private message :).
 
my partner of soon-to-be 8 years is hearing. When we first dated, we would write back and forth and I told him about the local deaf centre which offered free ASL classes. He signed up for it straightways and went on to take up two more courses. He also became used to my speaking (which I know is far from perfect at all) and understands me well. He's an awesome guy, and I have to remind him from time to time. :)
 
Last night I was at an alumni reunion for my fraternity. One of the alumni from the very first pledge class 30 years ago when our chapter was first founded came up to me and asked me about how things were going with getting the school/professors to comply with my accommodations as he had noticed that I had not posted about it on facebook for a while. It then came out that he's a civil engineer and very passionate about making sure that his company always complies with ADA despite his underlings' bitching about it. He said that he's been watching my posts carefully because he likes the insight into the world of someone who actually benefits from it because it helps him with that quest of his to make everything disability-friendly and he likes keeping tabs on us undergrad brothers so he can make himself available to help if ever we need it. He asked if even if I wasn't comfortable talking about it publicly could I keep him updated privately so that he could learn more and know that I'm doing alright.
Brotherly love/concern and people who want to learn more rock.
 
Besides my husband and daughter, I have had the gamut with others, of awesome experiences of respect and going the "extra mile" and I've had the hurtful "dark side" of rudeness sometimes due to ignorance; sometimes due to just self-involved ornery-ness. Whether it should be "expected" in a universe where people are ordinarily polite and compassionate, or not, whenever it does happen for me, whenever someone goes out of their immediate way/comfort zone to help me communicate, meeting me more than halfway, that's something to appreciate. Perhaps the more we outwardly appreciate people's efforts to accommodate, the more energy and examples we send out, that this is the way it *should* be, will teach/educate what is needed? Maybe someday most people won't find it odd or strange or be put off by others who are different in some way from them? Just be respectful and open and accepting? :hmm:
 
Grayma said:
I do have one more, but maybe it's not my place, as a hearing person, to say whether this is remarkable or not.

My preacher at church, I think, is going a bit above and beyond. Because we don't have an interpreter, the preacher makes a special outline ahead of time, a much longer, extended outline with most of the sermon and all the Bible verses written out so we don't lose track of the sermon hunting up verses. He does this just for J, the deaf lady, and emails both of us the outline on Saturday so both of us can look it over ahead of time, and she can follow along during the sermon. He also has started putting more of his stuff on the power point, which is hard for him because he's old school and would rather not use it at all.

He also comes up as soon as J gets to church to ask if she got the outline in time and was able to print it, and if she didn't for some reason, he prints another copy for her.

I don't think the power point is such a big deal, that's just what he ought to do. But going out of his way to write an extended outline each week just for her does seem like more than just the minimum anybody should be able to expect.
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I didn't realize that this was out of the ordinary... The pastors at my church make very detailed outlines of basically the entire sermon and all of the Bible verses every Sunday. (The outlines are printed off and given out with the church bulletins, for everyone.) The outlines are so detailed, that you could read the outline and know everything that was said during the sermon. And they put a lot of visual information on the power point. They also make sure that, if they show a video during church, that it is closed captioned and that the captioning is on and working ahead of time. If a video that they want to show is NOT captioned, they put a brief summary of the video in the outline.

I go to a Hearing church, and I'm the only deaf person who usually attends there - except for some older people who are hoh. And they did all of this BEFORE I started attending there, too. I'm VERY grateful for those outlines - otherwise, I'd be hopelessly lost during church.
 
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