The confusion set in when I was born. Like all babies, my parents named me. ("Well Duhhhh", I hear you all cry...read on.) But when your born to deaf parents, nothing is simple and easy, including being given a name.
It all started with the day I was born. We all know the typical story of child birth; mom goes into to Labor and Delivery in pain, only to emerge all a glow, carrying her swaddled pain. Dad, he stays in the waiting room, smoking, biting his nails and wondering how he ever got there predicament in the first place. (Yes, the waiting room. I was born long before it was fashionable for fathers to be in the delivery room. Back in those days, fathers weren't permitted anyplace BUT the waiting room. Mom was on her own. Pop was on his own. In those bygone days, shrouded with the mist of ever onward technological advancement, let us remember, there was no such beast known as an "interpreter".)
My Pop was no different. His job was to hold down the waiting room and answer the most important question of all when the nurse came to ask, "Whats the baby's name". Not to hard you say, maybe not, but of extreme importance. The whole operation for Pop was made a bit more complicated. See, Pop is a proud product of residential school education from the 1940's and 50's. In those days, the goal was to ensure that all the deaf students had an easily usable language that would have future employment and social productivity. For residential schools, that meant teaching the deaf students American Sign Language. English was taught, all students were expected to be able to read and write English. What wasn't focused on was speech and lipreading. Those students who could master speech and lipreading were encouraged, those that were not as apt at those skills had their ASL proficiency built up. Pop was one of the later students.
When Mom and Pop went to the hospital for the first baby, the pressure was on Pop. (The pressure was on Mom too, so please ladies, don't get all outraged at me. She had her own trials with the hospital during that time. Sure, she had it all explained how babies came about, but the all important information of what the nurses and doctors did to a lady once she is in the hospital to give birth was woefully neglected. But that's a different blog, for a different time.) Think about the years of abuse any husband would be liable for should they inadvertently give the wrong name to the baby. ( Oh the humanity! Hell hath no fury like a wife with a wrongly named baby! A cold sweat pours down me at the mere thought.)
As I was saying, Pop was in the waiting room, clawing the arm of the chair, eyes glued to the door...the Doorway 0f Accountability...from whence the diabolical nurses come. Slowly the wall clock mocked him. The other father-to-be, who kept talking to Pop in unintelligible facial distortion, once friendly due to shared doom of paternity, were all now bunched on the other side of the room, looking at him with quizzical expressions as to why he was "too good" to talk with the rest of the condemned men?
Then the moment was at hand. In swept Nurse Ratched, calling out a name. Terror gripped Pop as his eyes bounced from her nonsensical lips, to the other terror tricken men and back to Nurse Ratched. No one moved. Again Nurse Ratched made the grotesque mouth manipulations, yet with greater purpose and annoyance. no one moved...she asked the other men in the corner and in unison they pointed at Pop. She approached Pop and again moved her mouth, but slowly and with apparent volume judging by the burst of coffee flavored breath with which she fanned Pop's hair and dried his eyes. Squinting at her lips, he searched for any morsel of intelligible language...then there it was...Pop drew back with his right eyebrow lifted in recognition of "Deef Bob". With a deep, slow breath of acceptance, Pop nodded his head yes with a flat expression.
Now was the time of truth. She asked him more...Pop began to sweat, desperate to get the meaning of the barely quivering lips. Then salvation came as Pop reached into his right shirt pocket and produced his pad of paper and a pencil. (No self respecting residential school graduate would ever be caught in those days venturing out into the wilds of the hearing world with their trusty pad of paper and pencil...maybe even a few in case of an emergency.)
Pop wrote, "What say you? I am deaf, do not yell, it will not help and annoys others. Must I also remind you we are in a hospital, which I remind you is a quiet zone".
Unamused, Ratched wrote: "What's the name of the baby?"
Carefully, Pop wrote out the name and she nodded her head. Clicking her heels, she turned and stomped off. He had done it!
Then came the second baby for my parents. Pop was ready and cool. Nurse Ratched appeared;he wrote the name; all went like clock work.
The third baby quickly come unexpectedly and Pop was relaxed, full of confidence. (You know how parents get on their third babies. Look how they handled the baby bottle with all three kids. Should the bottle be dropped on the floor, the parents rush in to grad it as it barely skims the floor. All is are a mad frenzy, frantic to sterilized the contaminated bottle of filth and disease in such a way that Louis Pasteur would be proud to behold. The second baby, the bottle hits the floor and the parents rush to rinse it under scolding hot tap water. By the third baby, should the bottle roll around the floor, be kicked under the couch and matted with bust bunnies, the seasoned parents blow on it, give it a wipe on their jeans and stick it back in the baby's mouth with no thought of germs what-so-ever.) Such was the contentment of a seasoned father.
In walked Nurse Ratched. Up jumped Pop, pad and pencil in hand, beaming at his efficiency, only to be met with a scowl of disapproval. Head tilted and drawn back, brows squinting, Pop read the word "name" on her Septuagenarian pieces of flesh that once passed for lips. Pointing at the pad, he held out what he had written. Again Ratched said no. This went back and forth till Rached walked out. Pop saw her go over to a doctor and exasperatedly, and very animatedly, explained the problem. The doctor looked at Pop and thought and proceeded to then walked away.
Deeply concerned what this all meant, Pop paced the waiting room. Puzzled as to the queer behaviors of the hearing, he looked at the pad, checked it was all written correctly and scratched his head. The doctor walked in again. This time Ratched was carrying a bundle. Again Rached asked "name" and Pop pointed to the pad. No they both shook their heads as the doctor took the bundle and unwrapped it.
COMPREHENSION blessedly flashed across Pop's fevered brain. He looked at the pad, disdainfully scratched out the wrong name and wrote the appropriate name. The doctor nodded yes approvingly. Ratched curtly nodded yes. Pop pulled out cigars.
Naturally, after two daughters, Pop just assumed it would be a girl and so wrote a girls name. Once I had my splendor flapping in the smoked filled waiting room for Pop and all else to see, my rightful name was written on the pad.
That was the beginning of my bewildered and befuddled life. CODA-hood had reared it's unforgiving head.
Not being satisfied with his attempt to give me a girl's name, Pop further confused me with my sign name. Sign names are a precious and highly personal sign given to each child by their deaf parents. Sign names are to be cherished and beloved. Parents spend endless hours studying their children's personalities, physical features, distinctive manorisums; all in the hopes of creating the personification of their children in a sign name. A sign name so perfectly matched to each child, so as to render an instant mental image of the child in everyone's mind when the sign is produced.
I was not any different. My sign name had been careful thought out and crafted, as had my two sisters' sign names. Yet, that's where my Pop once again sent me down the road of confusion.
See, every time I innocently did something when I was growing up, Pop would slap his forehead, point at me and make sign for my name, followed by a statement much like, "Ugggh...What are you doing boy?! Stop! Just come here now...", then sign my name again.
(I refer you dear friends, to the top of this story. There I have posted a a video clip of the sign name Pop had me believe was my name. I have been so kind as to repeat the name a few times for those who are signing impaired.)
What Pop had me believing was my sign name, till I reached the tender college years, was in fact not my name at all. The sign Pop constantly used in reference to me was the sign for "incompetent", "inept", "moron"...(I"ll stop here, for the point has been made.) All along Pop had been signing, "You, nincompoop! Uggghhhh! What are you doing boy?! Stop! Just come here now...Nincompoop!" Not, "You, Steve! Uggghhhh! What are you doing boy! Stop! Just come here now...Steve!".
You see now why I'm so bewildered. I had it impressed on me from the start by Pop. CODA-hood is not a spectator sport and clearly not for those of weaker constitutions.
