I am confused when you said that you was not a deaf child and that you lipread hearing/Oral people. So did the hearing parents and family forced you to attend the mainstream or public schools trying to understand what hearing teachers and hearing students said in the classrooms?
Also that does not make any sense that the ASL classes offer only alphabet signs. It is more than that. Just make sure there is a Deaf teacher that teach the whole package like fingerspell (alphabet signs) signs, sign words, even including how to make sentences plus learning about Deaf Culture.
I know what it is like to be Oral in the Mainstream schools that don't allow us to learn how to sign ASL and then have a ASL interpreters in classrooms. I was there, too, as a deaf oral students in elementary and high schools. It was very frustrating and very depressing.
Also it is the same thing with family members like parents and siblings who don't understand what you and I suffered not understand what hearing people said. Like in the film, the young girl had a hard time understand her mother's boyfriend who had full beard and moved his hands over his mouth that it is hard for her to understand him. She had talked with her mother about that. But she refused to believe that her daughter is deaf and still insisting that she do her best to understand him. But that goes South as it was not working out. That is very common to all hearing families believing that deaf oral children can cope with lipreading and understanding with hearing aid or CI. But that is what we struggled with it. It does not make our life easier. That is why we need ASL or BSL (film) to be able to communicate and to understand Deaf people.
The guy with the bald head and glasses were not nice to her just because he had never experience himself in the oral public schools. He has a hearing aid and went to Deaf school. He is a jerk to Oral deaf person like her. I understand where she was or is coming from.
