The woman has already been hit and killed by a train. There’s absolutely no need to add on to the grief by making her the poster child for a national campaign for educating the deaf about track walking and pager usage.

Until a few days ago, I hadn’t the faintest idea who this woman was. But now, although I still know very little about her, it seems as if every other person I talk to (including my husband) had met her at some point.

Just the mere amount and range of lives she was able to touch in such positive ways is testimony that she deserves to be remembered as much more than “the deaf beauty queen who got plowed over.” But, thanks to the lovely pigeonholing tendency of our media, that’s what’s happening to her right now.

I was able to find out about her through the blitzkrieg-speed spread of info through several different blogs. Like me, many of these bloggers did not know Tara personally. But I’ve noticed a disturbing trend.

“I have two thoughts,” writes one person. “First, we need to educate deaf children on how to deal with trains/train tracks. Second, we need to teach them pager etiquette and safety. Particularly high school students before they leave school and start living without adult supervision.”

Writes another: “I believe that her leadership and legacy can be carried on - by people who strongly believe that change and optimism can come out of her death. For instance… members of the NAD could pass a motion asking the national deaf organization to ensure young adults, older adults and all people who are enamored with pagers and handheld technology are properly educated.”

Gene Mirus was quoted in the Austin American-Statesman as saying deaf people often assume that they can feel a train coming, when, in fact, they cannot. The Statesman also credits Mirus with working on a national campaign to educate deaf people about the dangers of walking by train tracks.

Mirus is right about one thing. My husband and I experimented with this yesterday - standing 2 feet away from the tracks while two trains, one commuter and one freight, approached simultaneously, we didn’t feel a thing until both trains were less than 10 yards away. Until I realized what this meant, I thought for sure that the woman I’d been reading about in the news must have had suicidal intentions.

But amidst all the disrespectful and unrelated comments about her death made in Blogland (like this one, for example), I never expected to see deaf people turning onto ourselves and saying we need to educate ourselves about pager usage and the dangers of walking near train tracks.

Now, I didn’t know Tara. I don’t know the area she was walking in when the tragedy occured. But I certainly am not going to be part of the rallying cry that says, “You hear about Tara McAvoy? You stupid deaf people! Don’t you know not to walk on the tracks and to use your pager safely!?”

Just yesterday as I was waiting for a freight train to pass, I watched as a group of teenagers walking home from school scurried across the tracks just inches before a CSX train barrelled on through (and the horn was blaring too). Not one of them was deaf.

As a regular MARC train rider, I’m always hearing stories of people in this area being hit by trains when they walk along the tracks. Not one of them has been deaf.

Just last year, DC decided to follow in New York State’s footsteps and outlaw all usage of handheld devices while driving (although I’ve yet to see the rule be enforced). Was this law brought on by deaf people? Not a chance.

But because Tara McAvoy made one stupid mistake, all of a sudden I see calls for educating deaf people.

Please.

Deaf people, in general, aren’t stupid. And -eureka!- neither are hearing people. But they both make mistakes. They both get hit while paging or chatting on the phone. They both get run over by trains.

To make such a big deal about Tara being deaf is natural, sure, since we all assume if she’d heard the horn we wouldn’t be hearing about her today. But to say she died because she was deaf, and furthermore, all deaf people need a specific kind of education? That strikes me as strange and wrong.

Do we need a national campaign for common sense? Sure. But there’s no need to make it totally focused on deaf people. There’s certainly no need to hold up “The Deaf Beauty Queen” as a shining example. That’s just backwards thinking, reeking of audism and discrimination. And we’re doing it to ourselves? Sigh.

And the saddest thing - or what I’m most afraid of - is that this unwanted attention and these calls to blame deaf people for their own ignorance is taking away from an opportunity to grieve and to celebrate someone who obviously touched more people throughout our community than we’ll ever realize (the link leads to a gorgeous tribute website).

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