It has been more than one month since I posted my last blog. Well, I’ve got some stories to tell you about my deafness.
Yeah, I did write a few college papers about my experiences going to a school for the deaf and then mainstreaming into the New York City Public School System, which was great overall for my educational, social and professional purposes, the most important of which had (and still has) continued to allow me to communicate relatively well with people with typical (e.g., normal) hearing. There are always obstacles every single day, even more with coronavirus going on right now. I’ve got to wear a facemask whenever I go out to town for shopping, for example. I can’t read lips of people wearing their own facemasks, and I sometimes feel rather hindered when I try to speak through my facemask. Even though I do speak OK through my facemask, there will always be people who have difficulty understanding my ‘deaf’ accent. Oh, c’est la vie.
There was an interesting (albeit bittersweet) difference between the Lexington School for the Deaf and Public School 179 in Fresh Meadows, a suburb in Queens, NY. Every October at Lexington, there would be an annual Halloween party where every student and maybe teacher would wear a costume. There’d be some foods, some sweets, and some drinks (non-alcoholic, of course), and there’d be a contest for different types of best costumes – most scary, most ugly, most creative, etc. I didn’t win anything, but who cared? – I had lots of fun there.
Then, it was in October 1973 when Halloween was coming up. At that time, I was a fourth grader at P.S. 179, and I had no idea as to what was going on or what would happen as time came closer to Halloween. Of course, I didn’t hear anything from my ‘new’ classmates or my ‘new’ teacher, and I thought nothing would prevent me from wearing a costume. Since I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t want to do anything dramatic so I decided to appear as Tom Sawyer. Just like Tom Sawyer, I was an idealist or at least a daydreamer at that time, but I would keep it subtle. So on Halloween, I walked into my class, and found no one wearing any costume in class. Not even my teacher had one. It was good that I kept my costume a subtle one so that I could seem as if I was wearing ‘normal.’ I was a bit disappointed but it was no big deal – I chalked it up as experience.
Since everyone wearing a facemask is already wearing a costume, I wish all of you a Happy Halloween!