I’ve gotten that question too, but all of their reaction to my answer generally has been, ‘Oh.’ And with teachers, they had the common sense to ask me privately before or after class. :P

Your comment about getting those weird comments is interesting. I’m pretty much always Deaf too. I only use my voice when I’m angry or irritated and that’s not very often. But I rarely get those weird comments nowadays.

Maybe it’s my attitude that scares people into not making idiotic comments! :D

Want one more story? ;-)

Same university…different teacher.

This teacher also interrupted his own lecture to ask me if sign language was “universal”.

I said no, it wasn’t universal, since French Deaf have their own sign language, German Deaf have their own, Japanese Deaf have theirs, etc etc.

He thought about that for a second, then said, “How sad!”

I couldn’t believe it. I mean, hearing people have THOUSANDS of languages all over this planet. Even in China, there are literally hundreds of dialects within the Chinese language that are seriously different enough to cause a communication barrier.

Not only that, it is well known in linguistics field that a language can only be supported & sustained up to a certain distance. Once you pass a certain distance, it becomes too difficult for people to support the language, and then inevitably, new words or changes in grammatical structure turn up. That’s why there are so many languages.

And this guy was telling me that Deaf people could only have ONE language for the entire planet? I don’t think so!

So I told him (as nicely and politely as I could): “Well, when hearing people come up with one universal language for themselves, then maybe we Deaf will think about doing the same.”

After I said that, the whole class got really QUIET for like 20-30 seconds, and then the teacher hurriedly continued his lecture where he had left off.

He was just one of those…um…punks or goths or off-the-wall types.

I had another experience at that same university which I handled very differently.

I took this intensive course in Shakespeare and this teacher was a jerk in general who lived and breathed Shakespeare (that in itself didn’t make him a jerk…other things did, but it’s too long to explain here). Normally he would lecture on Shakespeare the entire time and very rarely invited any questions or comments from students. He liked having the floor all to himself and usually got emotionally involved in his speeches.

Anyway, one day he was well into his lecture when all of a sudden he stopped himself and abruptly asked me the sign for “orgasm”.

Now, up until that point, nothing in his lecture that day (or even the week/s before) even remotely covered sex or orgasm at all.

I was offended because it was clearly off the point and had nothing to do with his lecture and I wasn’t about to educate him about signs for “orgasm”.

So I lied and said there wasn’t any and that we simply spelled it out. He looked SO DISAPPOINTED, like he was expecting me to do something really dirty or blue or something.

If it had been a student who had said that, I would have given him/her a much more scathing response. But as it was a teacher, he got away with just a lie from me (and of course, a loss of potential titillation & entertainment value).

He knew. He just thought it was funny or cool to know these four signs.