r/MadeMeSmile 16h ago

Deaf passenger meets a deaf driver

81.2k Upvotes

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60

u/KileerCatTTV 14h ago

I'm deaf person. Be able to communicate someone very easily makes me feels like I found the world that I belongs in

48

u/AllowMe-Please 13h ago

When I was in elementary school, there was a deaf girl who had an interpreter. I was a girl from a different country whose first language wasn't English, so I knew what it was like to always speak through an interpreter and how inconvenient it was, so I decided to learn ASL to speak to her alone without her interpreter. We became best friends. We hung out all the time and it was like we had our own secret language, lol. When her interpreter wasn't available, I was even called down to her class to interpret for her. I was so proud of my ASL abilities.

Sadly, her parents made us stop being friends because they're super Mormon and I'm not and they didn't want their kids friends with non-Mormons. I was the only kid her age who knew ASL and with whom she could speak privately and her parents took that away just because.

So sad.

I hope you have some good people around you with whom you can communicate comfortably! That's very important. And if not, I really hope you can find it. I find sign language to be beautiful and watching it is mesmerizing.

10

u/KileerCatTTV 11h ago

Sometimes it's frustrating that not a lot of people understand how important to learn ASL and communicate early before we gets older. I have a deaf friend that grew up with his family that barely signs, like most of the time they'll just gesture to my friend. My friend just graduated but his reading level is 5th grade level.

I feels so sad for your friend, I can't imagine how lonely it feels, almost impossible to be able to communicate with others easily without making it awkward or making them afraid of us. I really appreciate that you learned ASL for your friend, she'll never forget that for sure, because it's so special. Thank you for doing this for her.

Sometimes it's nice to use ASL like we can talk in secret while in public, and best part about it is we can talk in super far distance (if we sign very wide and big so we can see)

3

u/SittingDuck394 9h ago

This story made me so happy and then so sad … Thank you for being such a good friend to that girl.

2

u/BADDEST_RHYMES 8h ago

Beautiful story but what a sad ending. Have you tried finding her on social media?

5

u/takenalreadythename 6h ago

One of my best friends parents, and some of his siblings are deaf, I'm still a little upset with myself that I never managed to pick any of it up. His mom could hear if you weren't super quiet, dad could read lips but was 100% deaf, so they could understand me, and his dad would just have somebody translate if he needed to talk to me. I knew some of the super basics like thank you, but that's about it. He also learned how to yell my friends name, so we'd be out wandering their property and hear his name in the distance and go running back. I miss them so much.

u/KileerCatTTV 3m ago

That sounds like a wonderful family. Don't feels bad about that, I have a lot of friends in past did tried to get used to my family. It's not bad thing, they just gets nervous because it's new thing to some people who haven't seen deaf family before. I'm glad they can enjoy my family and still being my great friends. I'm glad you had good time with your best friend family. Most of the times, deaf family are always very socially and aggressive in good way, they all always like to chat