Becoming Deaf

Before I completed this assignment, I knew it wouldn’t be easy. But the extent of difficulty this project presented me with was quite unexpected. Hearing other students talk about their deaf weekend and the way it was described on paper could not compare to living it. Becoming “deaf” for a weekend not only affected me, it affected my parents, my friends, my trainers, even my horse. Although it was a challenge, I tried my best to live my life as I usually would, without isolating myself in silence in my room, or skipping out on my daily routine. Thinking back to the months prior when I had taught my mom the alphabet and a few basic signs, I internally thanked myself. Even the tiny bit of sign language she knew made the weekend easier. Carrying

I completed my usual morning routine, sans music, which was quite strange. Before this weekend, I wasn’t aware of how much time I spent listening to music. The commute to the barn was oddly quiet, with no chit-chat between my mom and I or any pop and country hits being belted out through the car’s speakers. At this point, my mom was extremely frustrated with our amount of communication and the pain she felt in her joints in her hands from attempting to fingerspell everything to me. I was at the barn for around four hours, and everyone that I saw thought there was something wrong with me because I normally talk a mile a minute, but I was completely silent. My jumping lesson with my trainer Carolyne was hysterical to watch. She tried to replicate a trot and canter with her hands, and point to the jumps. Finally, she gave up and asked me to watch the other girls so I knew what the course was. The language barrier made me feel left out and lonely most of the day because most of the other kids at the barn felt awkward around me, and consequently ignored me. Luckily, many of the moms were interested in my project and wanted to learn some signs. A lady named Beth, who is my friend Ally’s mom, is hard of hearing and when she was in her twenties she learned C-Sign, which is a form of ASL slang. When you don’t know a word in sign, you replace it with the fingerspelled word. It was a relief to converse with someone who knew how to sign, and it helped me to stay focused and not cheat. Once I had finished riding the three horses I had been assigned, my mom drove us to Mel’s back in Livermore, where we had lunch. To order, I pointed to what I wanted to order on the menu, then used my phone to ask her to sign the receipt. I also explained why I was acting as if I was deaf. After lunch, my mom and I got our nails done. It was a bit tricky to communicate with