Confessions from a deaf man doing his best he can...

I stopped blogging right before last Thanksgiving because of several reasons:

1. I had a personal crisis
2. Because of #1, I threw myself into serving the deaf community
3. Because of #1 & #2, I ran out of time/things to say
4. Because of #1, #2, & #3, I stopped blogging
5. Because of #1, #2, #3, & #4, I took on a second job (teaching)

About 2 days into the 2nd job, a friend needed us after her husband walked out on her and the family.  His reason at the time?  "I can't do this, I need time to myself."  That made me very angry because of the way he said it...as if he really wasn't required to be responsible for everyone.

As if he had an escape clause.  What the...? 

This triggered the following scenarios:

1. Stepped in as a substitute for the friend and her family
2. Discovered the husband had a mistress (he denied everything, even when the mistress' father stepped forward to say he is living with her)
3. Had to deal with the jerkwad myself since I report directly to him on the board
4. Aforementioned jerkwad disappeared, shirking his duties which made my job harder
5. After missing 3 straight meetings while barely doing any of his duties, he resigned via e-mail
6. Incompetent Veep had to step up and I had to deal with the moron myself
7. Wife asked me to talk to the friend because she was feeling down
8. Friend asked wife something about me; wife told her she trusts me and directly asked me to flirt with friend a bit - make her feel good and like a woman again

When we (friend and I) were getting to know each other a little bit better in the beginning, she asked me WHY her husband would leave her for a woman who is young.  My response was this - "He left you for a woman with no obligations in her world; no kid, no house to maintain, nothing.  Even her car and auto insurance is being paid for by her parents.  Remember, he said he didn't want responsibility and she fits the bill."

I have discovered friend's mind to be incredibly beautiful and intoxicatingly erotic.  Could not get enough of her...she was incredibly smart and she held her own against me during our chats and I'd think this the whole time - "And he left her?  I'd never leave her!"

Right before the date for divorce to be finalized in court, he TRIED to get back together with her.  She did waver on that a little.  I knew why - it's the familiar feeling of having a security blanket.  I reinforced the very reason why he left and she never wavered again.  Despite his best efforts, friend walked into the court, signed the papers, and walked out.  She showed me her text to the mistress afterward, "It's over, you can have him now."

Then...softball season came around.  Come back next week for that...if you want.  :)

Talking "tiny", mumbling, and/or unclear lipreading

No, this is not about little people who mumble at high speed. ;) This is about a certain kind of people who fall into the unfortunate category of "Impossible to Lipread".

Those who fall under the column heading tend to:

• mumble


• whisper


• talk in low voice


• wear very bushy mustaches


• thick accents (usually foreign)

I have tricks to help me build "lipreading habits" with everyone. What I meant by that is once I figure out how a certain person would pronounce words, I can get into their habits and be able to lipread them more effectively. This does NOT mean I lipread flawlessly or understand better than 60% most of the time. I have yet to meet a deaf person who can lipread flawlessly, never mind that Sue Thomas, the deaf FBI agent.

I once knew a young guy who had this habit of "lisping" the f sounds with the th sounds, like saying "are you death?" instead of "are you deaf?" upon meeting me for the first time. Then about 10 years later, I had a manager who kept saying "bof" instead of "both", which I understood clearly because of my prior experience with that young guy. The weird thing was, I was told this is how some black people talk (which I didn't know at the time)...and this young guy is white.

The point being, people have their ways of saying words, accents or not. I lived in the South (have relatives who still does), in the Northeast (upstate New York), and the Midwest. The worst/impossible accent for me to comprehend? That would be Russian or Slavic accents, which totally kills my ability to lipread.

I've had to deal with new people each and every time I meet when they do not know how to sign. It's literally a pain in the butt when I have a new class and I have to build on the lipreading habits. The environment in a classroom is socially rigid - I can't just jump in and say, "Excuse me, I missed that...can you repeat?" over and over. The roll call is always the best way for me to begin my building process because I can pick out my own name as a teacher goes down the list of students...until I hit the wall in that teacher.

I was in my first year of community college and I initially thought I was in the wrong room for an English-related class (I believe it was Literature or some advanced writing) because I was only 18 and everyone else looked to be in their 20's or older. I sat down in the front row to give me the vantage point. An old woman shuffled into the room and she had the shakes from advanced age. When she spoke, her lips barely moved and she kept licking her lips to moisten them.

I sat there, blankly looking at her. Not one word was discernible. Then she pulled out the attendance sheet and...I knew that I wasn't in top half due to my last name and I stared hard at her mouth. Uehj owme? Lieg ahl? This went on like this and I kept staring for my name, knowing fully well that she would say my name again if I "missed" it and I'd get to jump in...

I understood NONE of anything, not even my own name. I waited until after the class to talk to her and I introduced myself. She said something I didn't understand. I talked with her some more, but I was going nowhere in terms of understanding her at all. I started to freak out and I said something about having to go and I left.

I sweated about going back. How was I going to get through the second day, let alone the whole semester?

Second day. I sat in the front row again. My heart was beating wildly. A different teacher came in and explained that she is the substitute teacher. She said the original teacher needed surgery and would not be coming back for the semester.

Wait a minute...I understood the substitute!

I breezed through the semester with her and I even signed up with her for another class the following semester. :)

ADSL's questions, pt 3

"Is there such a thing as a singles bar for sign languagers? If so, have you ever been to one and whats it like? Is everyone signing all over the place?"


Cute questions, indeed. :) What we like to do in order to have our own version of a singles' bar is we take over a section of a bar and chat away. The en masse of flying hands can be intimidating to waitresses and bar patrons.

There are three reasons for having our own singles' bar: 1) for deaf people to socialize, 2) for interpreting students (they're called that because they are studying sign language in hopes of becoming an interpreter) to help enhance their signing/comprehension skills, and 3) looking to get lucky.

Yes, I have been to one - that's how my wife and I started dating. ;)

Story series - the only time I ever wet my pants at school

When Gillian from "A Daft Scots Lass" talked about what happened with her daughter at school (see the post about that), it triggered a memory in me.

This happened in my first year in a school where everyone was hearing. I went to a deaf school so a new school, filled with strangers who had little or no experience in dealing with a deaf person, was intimidating for me.

I had this teacher who would do double duty as a math teacher and a P.E. teacher. He and his wife, who also worked as a P.E. teacher, were extremely tough to deal with; even for a hearing student. How tough was he? I walked under a volleyball net to get to my assigned spot for the roll call and I was promptly punished with 5 laps around the gym for that infraction. Didn't matter to him that I was new to the school, let alone know I wasn't supposed to go under that.

While in his math class, I felt the need to go to the bathroom and I looked at the clock. Over half an hour left to go. Groans. I tried to hold it in until the class was over...when it was 20 minutes left to go, the wait was too much for me. I got up and walked over to his desk.

I remember seeing a student look at me wide-eyed as I walked by, as if he was questioning my action. I didn't think much of that. When I got to his desk, I waited for him to look at me. He looked at me in a manner that said, "What? You're bothering me!". I politely asked for permission to go to the bathroom.

He looked at the clock on the wall, back at me, at the watch on his wrist, back at me, and said, "Can you wait another twenty minutes? GOOD!" He looked down right away which told me that he didn't want to let me respond.

Suddenly, the room seemed hot and small. I knew everyone was looking at me. I turned around and locked my eyes on my desk, daring not to look at anyone. I sat down and locked my eyes on the teacher. I waited...and waited...I started to squirm more and more with the bladder threatening to burst.

Then, it happened. I could not hold it in anymore, no matter how hard I tried. I panicked a bit, worrying that the students could hear me peeing in my pants or smell that. Felt like I was going to pee for a long time. Finally, I stopped. I moved my butt up and down the chair to try to sop up the pee.

I sat there in silence, waiting for the bell to ring. When it finally rang, I pretended to have trouble getting my stuff together so I would be the last student to leave. The classroom was just 30 yards away from the principal's office, but it may as well be a mile because the students had filled the hallway and I knew that anyone could see that I had peed in my pants.

I breathed in deeply and lowered my head and walked out into the long walk to salvation. Simply told the secretary that I wet my pants. She called my mother. My mom came with pants and underwear. She tried to ask me what happened and I told her I didn't want to talk about it now.

After I finished the day and went home, I told my mother what happened and she blew her top. I learned years later that she threatened to sue the school...and that would have been for the 2nd time - the first time was when they put me in a different class and tried to play that off as "for academic reasons". About that 1st time, I'll save for another post.

The point was, I thought this was the norm for what had happened. I knew so little about the hearing culture. I didn't even know you weren't supposed to walk between two people conversing with each other without saying "excuse me". It was a major transition for me.

Poll results

That's the result of a poll I put to the visitors. Interestingly, nobody went for the final option because I considered that to be open-ended and allowed others to express their opinion that wasn't listed. Also, it was interesting to me that so few of you (2) were interested in my experiences as being a deaf person with Story Series/Anything funny (3 each) and Memories (4) close behind.

I will keep varying the nature and topic of my posts (yes, I will still post "Say What?" on a recurring basis). Thank you very much for taking your time to answer my poll...I appreciate that! My curiousity has been sated, for now. ;)

If you thought job hunting was hard, try being a deaf person! (pt 2)

The 3rd manager? She was HJIC's secretary before she got the job. That surprised everyone because she had never been anything more than a secretary in any job anywhere. Everyone *knew* how she got the job. I stayed quiet because she had been nice to me when she was the secretary and I had helped her with some stuff in the past. None of that mattered because she got very mean to me and did everything she could to get me to quit.

Once I had to go to the bathroom badly (and I do mean BADLY) and when I finally came out, the Bitch (HJIC's former secretary) caught me on my way to the desk and she claimed that I was gone for 30 minutes. "Impossible," I said, "since I lose the feeling in my legs after 20 minutes." The Bitch then let me go and called a supervisor (not mine) over and while standing just 6 feet away from my desk, in the center of the department...they started discussing openly for anyone to hear...about my bathroom habits. I found out about that later and I was told they were overheard in saying, "How can he sit in that office chair for hours on end and not lose any feeling in his legs?" among other things. EXCUSE ME?!?

I was so mad and embarrassed by that. I was given an opportunity to retaliate when I had to write my argument for why I deserved a raise during my annual job review. I had done the job consistently with high remarks year in, year out. So, I wrote up a nasty review on the Bitch and I basically outed her as being HJIC's companion during business trips that had nothing to do with her job duties.

I was called into HR and I met with two ladies - one of them was the same woman who was impressed with me at the job interview. They asked me subtly why I wrote the letter and I said, "You know why she got the job." They giggled at that and I instantly knew why they laughed. Everyone's suspicion about how the Bitch got her job was correct. They thanked me for my time and I thought that was that.

The firestorm that resulted from the review (in which I got "bad reviews" and received a tiny raise of 1.5% instead of the usual 3%) motivated me to look into taking jobs within the government center so I could get away from that. The same woman, who was impressed with me at the job interview and working in HR at the time (and still was), let me know about a job opening. She knew I had all the qualifications and I immediately applied. Few days later, HJIC called me into the office and basically patted me on the head about the job and shoved me out the door. What did he say? Something along the lines of "This job is not for you, but thank you for your interest. You may go now." I was boiling mad after that.

When HJIC ordered a security door installed which became a major inconvenience for everyone because we all had to use our ID to get in each and every time, I observed something about HJIC and the security door. He had grown weary of that and started using the "back door" tactic by going through a conference room instead of dealing with the security door. I retaliated against HJIC by locking the door opening into the hall from the conference room, effectively locking him out and forcing him to go through the security door because HJIC's new secretary had hearing issues and couldn't hear him knocking on the door. If he forgot his ID, he would have to ask someone to let him in. Soon, he was checking the door to make sure it wasn't locked before leaving...I'd wait a while and...lock the door. He never caught on as to who was locking him out, let alone catch me in the act. ;)

The screaming supervisor finally retired 1.5 years after the 1st manager had retired. The Bitch had since moved on to an easier job where she didn't have to deal with HJIC as much (and me since I was starting to catch onto how the management style worked and started using them against her effectively)...plus, she didn't have to work as hard at her new job. The 4th manager, for whom I had warm regards for because she was my supervisor during my first month there before I was promoted, was a horse of a different color. Literally.

I applied for the supervisor's job since I was the only one who knew how to do the job, inside and out. The Horse refused to interview me and put someone else in the seat who had ZERO experience instead. I was initially bothered by that, but I figured that maybe I didn't meet the qualification of being 4 years on the job. The new supervisor was devoutly Christian and he struggled mightily to reconcile what was going on - being told by the Horse and HJIC to do things that weren't helpful to me career-wise and he tried to buffer that by taking some of the heat himself. How did I know that? He told me. He couldn't handle it anymore after a year and became an appraiser.

I applied again for the seat and the Horse again refused to interview me and picked a guy who had been working for 3.5 years instead. I screamed "discrimination" and threatened go to HR and HJIC cut me off by saying the county government had this obscure rule about the so-called "short list rule" where if there were less than 5 people applying for the same job, the manager had the discretion of bypassing the interview process and picking someone. He even claimed that the guy had been here for 4 years and met the qualification. I e-mailed HR anyway and they confirmed the rule and HJIC went after me for that. I just sat there and pretended to listen while HJIC angrily spoke to me. He finally stopped talking and left.

I tried to reason with the Horse to no avail and I ended up saying, "So you want me to train (the Golden Boy) just like I did with (the Christian)?" The Horse actually said, "You didn't train (the Christian)." "Oh, really? How did (the Christian) learn how to do his job then?" She shrugged at that. I said, "Fine. Good luck with (the Golden Boy)." and walked out of her office without giving her a chance to respond.

I refused to help the Golden Boy learn how to do "his" job and he started to fall further and further behind on his job. He even started coming into work and start working 30 minutes before his shift would start and staying 30 minutes after his shift ended just to try to keep up. The Horse KNEW why he was failing miserably and she was being stubborn about it. The Golden Boy finally quit after 11 months. I applied again and guess what? No interview. Picked a woman who had zero experience and had been with the county just 4 years. 4 years and 2 months to be exact.

A co-worker approached me at my desk with my new supervisor right beside her and asked me if I would help my new supervisor because the Horse didn't know how to help. I said, "You already know that I can't help." The new supervisor nodded and went to her desk...and did something unexpected. She e-mailed me and told me she learned from the same co-worker about everything and all the crap I had endured. All this in a very understanding manner and she ended the e-mail with "I will understand if you still do not want to help me learn. I wouldn't help me either if I had to go through all of that too."

The same co-worker, who told the new supervisor everything, shortly after found herself in a very messy situation and started telling the Horse everything in hopes of extracting herself out of that. The new supervisor pulled me aside and let me know the co-worker was basically selling me (and others) out. I was hurt by that because the co-worker was my "work wife" and we had shared things with each other closely and intimately. I thanked her and I promptly fed the co-worker disinformation. When the Horse realized the pipeline into the drones' mentality had been compromised, she cut the co-worker off and refused to help her out of the messy situation. I refused to do anything for the co-worker as well. That almost destroyed the co-worker.

I ended up being friends with the new supervisor and the co-worker finally mended the fence with everyone at work (except the Horse). Not long after that, I got my dream job. I loved it and I flew so high at my new job that I soared. I had found my paradise.

Story series - Point A to B to A, not C, D, or E. Clear?

You've learned from last week's post that I had been driving for less than a year when I hit the Hulk. I have a better story for you and it's infinitely more entertaining. :)

I was staying at my father's for the weekend and I was in the mood to have my best friend over to hang around with. My father did not want to go get him (he lived 30 minutes away) and I told him that I would be more than happy to go. He tried to deter me by reminding me that I was low on gas and he was not paying for gas.

No matter. I was willing to go and get him and take him back home. My father sighed and said to me, "Okay. I will let you go, on one condition. You go there and get him and come back here in one hour. Got that?"

I nodded my head. In reality, I was going "Yeah, yeah, whatever." in my head. He said, as if he had sensed that, "That means no stopping for food, no getting off that road for anything, nothing. Not even to go to the bathroom. Point A to B to A, not C, D, or E. Clear?"

"Yes, I got it."

5 minutes later, I was on the road with every cent of $2.35 pumped into my tank. I got my friend 20 minutes (yep, I drove fast) after that. I told my friend about what my father said and we had better hurry back. We were back on the road and about halfway to home, he convinced me to take a quick detour to look at computer games. What's the harm as long as I got back home in one hour?

After taking a quick look-over at a store located on a road perpendicular to the road I was supposed to be on, we got in my car and got ready to exit...only to find that the road was jammed full of cars. This added to my anxiety considerably - waiting for the cross traffic to clear enough for me to get out of the parking lot meant that the safety margin would shrink exponentially.

After about two minutes of waiting, suddenly there was a clearing and I jumped for it. Made it! My friend and I celebrated and high-fived each other. (Sound of a car crashing into another) Oh, bleep. Our celebration was short-lived. I had hit a car, 100 yards from the road I was supposed to be on.

100 yards. A block. A football field.

The driver angrily motioned for me to pull into a restaurant's parking lot and I followed. All I could think about was how I was going to explain this to my fa...when the driver jumped out of the car with a rearview mirror in her hand and slammed the door on the Cadillac hard.

Funny how I noticed the rearview mirror in her hand right away. Not her face, not her build, not her age, not her fashion style...just the mirror. As she stomped her way up to me, I could see she was a young woman, about same age as me...pretty and a bit heavy on the makeup.

She started yelling at me, which made it impossible for me to understand so I calmly told her, "I'm deaf." She glared at me, turned around, and walked around my car...to yell at my friend. I calmly said to her, "he is deaf too." and she threw her arms up and yelled in frustration before walking away from us. She went in her car and I noticed that there were 2 other young women in there. She got out and went into the restaurant.

All in the span of one minute. I took stock of the damage. My bumper was now pushed in and I could see the Cadillac's bumper was hanging a bit. I realized that I need to call my father. That's when one of the passengers came out and asked me if I go to that high school. I was stunned by not only that, but how easily I could understand her. I nodded at her and I asked how she knew that. She told me that she knew a girl there who has a deaf brother and she wondered if I was the same guy. I nodded again.

If you'll recall from my bully posts, I was the only deaf student there. Not hard to figure out. I was going to be a smart-aleck about it, but the young woman was very nice and pleasant. I was attracted to that. She asked if there was anything she could do for us and I remembered about my father. I asked her to call for me.

We chatted for a while (the driver got back in her car and never came out) and then my father showed up. Oh yeah. That look on his face. Readers, you KNOW exactly what I mean by that. Forget the Hulk. He had nothing on my father - I had to live with this one. He didn't say much to me. He didn't have to. I could feel it.

The young woman, after my dad left to talk to the driver and overheard my father ask the driver about contacting her parents, said "Oh boy, I don't want to be here when my friend's mother finds out." That's when I discovered that the driver was in bigger trouble than I was. No wonder why she was so livid and how she reacted to us.

She borrowed her mother's car...without permission and got busted for it due to my negligence. And my father? He asked me over and over and over for the next 6 months how much it cost to fix the Cadillac's bumper...and my bumper.

Bullying at home

Someone e-mailed me to ask this question - "Were you ever bullied at home? I would think you were. Is that too painful to discuss?"

No, not painful to discuss at all. I just talked about three instances of bullying at high school. Didn't talk about grade school (actually I did, you can read about it in my spitting war post) or my deaf school, let alone at home. Good question.

In Bully #2 post, I wrote about having been in fights. Most of the fights occurred near my house. The biggest one involved 3 boys jumping on me. As you will recall in Bully post #2, I made the leader pay by making the brick wall meet his head.

All of that paled in comparison to the kid who lived next door to me. I was a day older than him, but he had major issues - his mother left when he was a baby, he was 4th of 6 children, he had an older brother who was sadistic, his dad kept marrying his secretaries (his mom was one, his 1st stepmom was one, his 2nd stepmom was one, etc.), he got in fights with anyone and everyone, was held back in school twice before dropping out as a sophomore and he frequently stole things.

Took me a long time to figure out that he was friends with me only to take advantage of me. I didn't know better and I finally had enough of him when I was a junior. The breaking point happened that May when he cooked up some elaborate explanation about how he needed my car and how he would make a lot of money with my help.

After loading a full case of vodka bottles into the trunk of my car, he told me to drive to a certain location. I asked him how he got a whole case and he claimed that he took it from his father. I knew that his father doesn't drink vodka and I pressed him on that, but he stuck to his story.

After arriving at the destination, it dawned on me how he intended to make money with the case. We were at a prom party (this was BEFORE chaperones were commonplace in the mid 80's) and I felt sick to my stomach...he was trying to sell liquor to kids without regard to how they may or may not arrive home safely...or how the date may not turn out well while under the influence of alcohol.

Luckily for me, the night got cold and I managed to convince him that I would drive him back here after I went home to get my jacket. He had not sold any bottle yet and he went with me because he knew that I knew I was the getaway driver. He had no way of escaping if he stayed behind and got busted.

The moment I went into my house was the moment I told my mother what was going on. She immediately called his father and asked that we all meet in their living room. The son glared at me as we came in. She then told his father that there was a case of vodka in the trunk of my car and his own son was trying to sell them to the kids at the prom party.

His response? "I want to call the police and press charges on your son for trying to sell liquor."

My mother was shocked, but recovered quickly and said, "Want to bet whose fingerprints the police will find on the bottles? Want to bet what the witnesses will say who tried to sell them liquor? In fact, I wonder how YOUR son got a case of vodka. Hmm?"

The father just sat there.

Then he tried to blame me for putting ideas in his son's head. I was stunned by that. How could he say such things about me? I lived next door with the family for about 10 years and he said that? My mother explained to me afterward that he was in denial. He did not want to admit that his own son was so screwed up like that.

About 5-7 months later, he was arrested for burglary at an electronic store along with 2 other friends and not surprisingly, he made one of his friends the patsy by fingering him as the ringleader. After I found out about that, I went to the patsy and said, "I know you were not the ringleader." He felt better about that, but the look on his face...as if this...whatever it was...would be permanently etched into his face...I didn't and still don't know exactly what his thought was at that moment.

Out of curiousity, I covertly checked out the son on Facebook 2 months ago...wasn't hard with an unusual last name like his. He didn't list any family (I was unable to locate his siblings), didn't seem to have kids, his status showed that he is not in a relationship, and has 2,000+ friends. He looks THIN and looks old (remember...I am just one day older than him). Pathetic.

Story series - that was it?

Bear in mind that this was in the early 80's when this occurred. The practices described below in the story was commonplace at the time. Relax and enjoy the story.

I had graduated a year earlier from a school for the deaf whose philosophy emphasized oral communication over sign language (meaning we learned how to speak and read lips) and I was mainstreamed; struggling to understand the brave new world in 7th grade where everyone was hearing and I was the only deaf student there.

Out of the blue, one of my "friends" had suddenly turned against me by spitting at me while at recess. What I meant by the quote marks on the word friends was I thought anyone who spoke to me and interacted with me was by definition, a friend. How naive I was.

Just like that, his spit landed on my shoulder near my neck. I was shocked by the insult and the shock quickly turned into fury. I spat back at him, making sure to hit his face and I nailed him a centimeter from his nose. That pissed him off enough to spit back.

I retaliated. He responded. This escalated to a spitting war on a global scale. A teacher ran in to break up the spitting war and I never forgot her reaction of disgust when she saw what had transpired.

She marched us to the principal's offce. The principal had only three chairs so we weren't far apart at all. The teacher then left us to face the principal. I had met him months earlier and he seemed cordial but supportive to me. He had understood that the school was having its first ever deaf pupil and he was setting the benchmark for all other students and faculty to follow.

The principal got up from behind his desk and came around and leaned back on his desk. He made a mistake of asking the boy first what had happened. The boy got very animated and tried everything under the sun to blame it all on me. I just sat there and waited for the principal to speak to me. I had learned that was a very important thing to do - wait and don't speak until spoken to.

The principal abruptly cut him off and then he looked at me and said, "So what happened?" I calmly explained how I thought he was my friend until today when he just spat at me for no reason at all. I had not done anything wrong to him and I did not know why he started this. The principal nodded as if all this made sense to him.

The boy, probably sensed that I had won the principal over, got loud and tried to speak over me and everyone else. The principal stood up and went to the cabinet as the boy loudly denied everything. He opened the cabinet and pulled out something large, round, and flat that I couldn't make out. He dropped it on his desk for sound effect and I could feel the vibration of that metallic thud from the large round flat object landing on the desk.

The boy shut up immediately. The principal questioned him again and the boy tried again, in a somewhat calmer tone to blame everything on me. The principal sighed and looked at me. He said, "what do you have to say?" I told him that I did spit on him only because he spat on me first and I was able to show the gobs of saliva on my clothes. That convinced the principal.

He went to the intercom and paged for a certain teacher to come in. After a minute, the teacher (albeit a different one) came in. The principal said to me, "Come over here." I got up and walked over to him. I was able to see what the object was. A paddle with holes drilled all over the area. "Why did he do that?" as I wondered while walking over to him.

"Bend over and grab your _____" and I thought he said "knees" so I did as instructed. He tapped me on my shoulder to get my attention and I looked at him. He pointed to my ankles and said, "No, grab your ankles." I did as told. He stepped away and after a moment, I felt a thud on my butt. I realized that he had just paddled me...but...what I thought was "That was it?" It didn't hurt at all. My dad had spanked me before and his hand hit HARDER than that paddle. Okay.

The principal tapped me and I looked at him. He said, "Go sit down." Okay. I sat down. The principal motioned for the boy to get over there. The boy didn't have to be told to grab his ankles - he did it right away. I got to watch how the principal used the paddle. Arm went up...high...pause to lock in the impact zone...left foot moved forward, swish, thwack! The boy jumped out of his grasp position and yelped and looked back at the principal...and he suddenly went back into the position.

I actually burst out in laughter and both the principal and the teacher looked at me sternly. I apologized while giggling, but it was just too damn funny to see a boy react so poorly to the exact same thing that didn't affect me at all...and not only that, but to see him JUMP BACK into the ankle grasp position...as if he would be punished again for breaking the grip.

The principal told us to not do it again. I nodded and shrugged. The boy was completely intimidated and barely nodded. It was my only time ever in my life that corporal punishment was administered to me by someone who wasn't my parent.

The boy tried to do a smear campaign on me afterward, but I made sure to tell everyone what had happened in the office...including my "That was it?" moment and how he reacted to the paddle. He became a non-factor in my life and had faded away into obscurity by the time we went on to 8th grade.

Story series - Blood blister'd hand

Editor's note - I thought I had this scheduled to publish. My apologies to those who were expecting my regular post.

I was rather a wild child growing up. That's how people saw me. Why was I wild? I just didn't understand the societal expectations placed on me and the norms I was supposed to follow. Nobody had ever taught me...I figured almost all of that on my own. Bear that in mind when I tell this story of the blood blister'd hand.

Sometime in the day somewhere far away from the house, I had this undefined feeling deep down in my belly that I was in trouble. Didn't know what or why. Just knew. I never liked coming home and get spanked for what, to my underdeveloped mind, was no reason at all. Never liked having my parents administer corporal punishment to me and then say to me, "You know what you did!" No explanation. How was I supposed to know what I did when I didn't understand the expectations and the norms?

I decided that I would protect my butt from the inevitable sting of a parent's hand, but how? My young mind deduced that the rocks, when I'd fall on them, hurt A LOT...so, the rocks would hurt the hand that "fell" on them. Perfect. I gathered up a whole bunch of small rocks and stuffed them into my back pockets. Then I got up and went home.

Sure enough, my mother came to the door upon hearing my entrance into the house. She grabbed my arm before I could say anything and spun me around so she could swing her hand down to spank me. Thud. Not "thwack!" I felt the rocks push into me and that hurt a little. Surprised me...how the rocks hurt me...but I was more surprised by my mother's reaction to my "butt protection".

She howled in pain and held her wrist as she tried to shake the pain off. Perfect, my idea worked. She ran into the kitchen to soak her injured hand in cold water to help relieve the pain.

She never spanked me again. That was my entire recollection of this episode. When I told her about how I remembered this moment while discussing the demerits of corporal punishment few years ago, she told me something else had happened that day. The rocks were pointy enough and she had hit the rocks hard enough that she developed blood blisters on her hand. She confessed that she was too scared to spank me since then.

My idea worked too perfectly. I felt bad about that, but we all are able to laugh about it now.

Karma is a bitch and she has sisters...

I love that quote because you've heard phrases such as "Payback is a bitch", "Karma is a bitch", "Life is a bitch", etc. You can see how my favorite quote infers. ;)

This is in reference to a psycho I used to work for. I found out recently that a club has been forced to close the doors for a year due to a rapidly dwindling membership base and funds. I had served on that club with distinction as Vice President, President, and Vice President before the psycho came in and started maneuvering to get one of the cronies installed as V.P. at the election.

Several people told me they saw the psycho tell the V.P. candidate how to set up a voting bloc in order to win the position. I told them to not worry about it because clearly the psycho can't stand me and wanted me out. "Let them have the club", I said and walked away. Not even two years later, this happens.

The word got out about how the psycho had used job connections to get a lover a job in the same department. Not only that, the psycho is married. Huge conflict of interest. The psycho got demoted down from Program Director. I laughed when I heard that. Like I said...

Karma is a bitch and she has sisters.

Story series - The magical doors

When I was about 4 or 5, my family and I went to my paternal uncle's wedding. Since I could not understand what was going on, I was bored and itching to explore the place. My parents refused to let me leave during the ceremony and that drove me up the wall.

Finally, we got to move to another area. Didn't know this was a reception...but with all the commotion and whatnot, I was able to slip away. While exploring, I came across the magical doors.

I stepped in and marveled at the little round things. I pressed one of them and I was delighted to discover that, after a moment and some shaking of the floor, the doors would reveal to show everyone had disappeared along with the tables and chairs. I pressed another one and I got yet another different scene. I decided to try all the round things. Whenever I pressed one of those, they would change color and then go back to old color and after shaking, the doors would open to give me a different view.

After a while of getting random sights, the doors slid open to reveal my uncle standing there and my uncle shouted "Oh! I found him!" He rushed in and grabbed me and took me out of there. I screamed and hollered. I wanted more of the magical doors! I loved how things kept changing after pressing a button.

Have you guessed what the magical doors were?

The magical doors were...elevator doors. ;)

Needless to say, my parents refused to let go of me throughout the reception and the photos showed that. LOL

Whew, now that the Silent Weekend retreat is over...

Some of us met up at a restaurant near the retreat so we all could just hang out for the last time. The retreat each year keeps us so busy that we really don't get to do much together. That's okay - what we gain each year is the new memories and the bonds developed.

The theme this year was murder mystery, done in the style of the board game Clue. Sounds like fun, right? It sure was!

Knowing how massive the locale is, I brought my bike (third year in a row now) and so did another counselor. A third one had his bike on his mind but he forgot and wasn't happy about it. Despite the weekend forecast in the 30's overnight, we used our bikes all over the place. A few campers were very curious about my Trek 7300 bike and asked to use it. Of course, they had to ask me for permission...in sign language. ;)

After getting everything set up and decorated, everyone gathered in the mess hall to kick the weekend off. The staffer in charge explained, through voicing and signing, what the theme was and how it would go down. Each cabin would get a clue to get started on the game and everyone had to work for extra clues to help solve the mystery.

The winning cabin with the most points scored in the Dutch Auction game at the rec hall (after dinner) would get a clue. Admittedly, I had never heard of Dutch Auction and I had to listen to the rules. You had to put things in a bag that you thought would be called out by the emcee and you'd get points for that. Sorta like a reverse scavenger hunt, where you don't KNOW what you'd need in order to win.

Then with an added twist, the staffer said few minutes before she had secretly placed a mascot in each cabin (not related to the theme) and the cabins were charged with protecting their mascots from abduction at all times. This had never happened before. New territory. Hm.

I headed back to my cabin with the co-counselor so we could change into our characters for the night's main event where we would interact with the campers. Right as I was aboout to finish dressing up, the co-counselor left our room to wash up. He rushed back in and excitedly told me to, "come look now".

I followed him into the center of the cabin and I was amazed to discover that two male campers of my cabin had stolen ALL of the other cabins' mascots (see pic below; our mascot is the tan dog). I felt my chest swell up with pride when I realized that I would've liked to have thought of this first. These two campers had illegally abducted the mascots - they were supposed to wait until after the main event. I knew I would get heat for what they did...and I didn't mind that. Not one bit at all.

Faces blacked out to protect the guilty ones ;)

Not seen clearly is the fabric hen, between large blue

dog & pink pig - which will be visible in the next post

The other members came in and saw what had occurred. They loved it...suddenly we had that instant bonding. The younger thief signed to me, "What if mascots on list? We can 8x points!" Irrefutable logic. I signed back, "Me fine, put mascots in my sleeping bag...mine biggest." Let me explain the weird wording when we speak in sign language...we are signing and there is no need to sign each and every word since we mentally "fill in the blanks".

We went to the rec hall and one counselor approached me in an agitated manner, "Mascot gone! Don't know what mascot look like!" and another chimed in with "My mascot gone too!". I feigned my surprise at that. Hehe. When other campers and counselors saw the looted mascots on display, some of them went after me. After some accusations and arguing, I shrugged at them and signed, "Wish I thought that. "

The counselors went to the lead staffer to protest and she signed, "Sorry, game starts now." Ohh, I could feel the heat/glare from the counselors. I stuck to my guns...hey, I was (and still am) proud of those sneaky buggers! LOL

The first item called out was a toothbrush, which every cabin easily produced. The emcee signed, "Toothbrush, one point. RED toothbrush, two points". I knew I'd like the game and I stayed in the background so the campers would be more involved. The emcee was funny and creative with his "calls".

At one point, he signed "10 points, any 'I Love You' sign or symbol" and I watched my campers search frantically in vain for anything that resembled the famous "ILY" icon. As time dwindled down on that item, I suddenly remembered something. I rushed out to the emcee and I showed him my ILY tattoo. He signed, "Real tattoo? Not pen?" and I signed "Yes, real" and I showed him my other tattoo. He was so impressed by that he gave my cabin 20 points. A counselor saw what I did and ran over to show him her tattoo of a cartoonish hand in the "ILY" pose, holding a heart (on the right side of her lower back). He promptly rewarded her 25 points. LOL

Then...the emcee signed "5 points, cabin mascot". I grinned at that call and looked at the thieves. They looked at me with a mischievious look in their eyes. Other cabins protested "loudly" and the emcee signed, "30 seconds left!" Instant stampede to our spot for the looted mascots. Bedlam. Chaos. I saw both thieves were refusing to give up their preferred mascot, feeding the frenzy. I ordered both to give theirs up in order to restore the peace.

Then the game ended and the scores were tallied up secretly to determine the winning cabin to reward another clue. Meanwhile, the counselors were ordered to take their posts at their assigned tables and play games like blackjack (campers had to sign numbers), mirror relay (fingerspell a word back to a counselor), tactile fingerspell (campers had to put their hands inside a box and "feel" a counselor spell a word), etc.

That...was...just...Friday. LOL I'll publish part two (about Saturday and Sunday) tomorrow. :)

Recipes and permanent memories

First of all, I want to address a request made by Anjeny. She asked me for a recipe on the cupcakes that my wife made for our 10th anniversary party. She got them from Allrecipes.com (a very well-versed site).

Cupcakes:
Chocolate fudge cupcakes
Red velvet cupcakes
Vanilla cupcakes - same recipe as red velvet cupcakes, minus the food coloring.

Frostings:
Cream cheese frosting
Peanut butter frosting
Mint buttercup frosting with dark chocolate glaze - mint chocolate frosting, as everyone called it, was really weak at the beginning. I had my wife add more mint to it and we got it just right. As always, taste before serving for best results. ;)

I did have an anniversary present to give to my wife (as did she), but unforseen circumstances prevented that for both of us. Last Friday, I went with my wife to "exchange" the gifts...at a tattoo parlor. LOL She has always wanted to add three more tattooes to her two and I granted her that desire.

She kept thinking I'd back out of getting inked for real. I wasn't really into the idea of getting inked because I always had that "what if" scenarios running through my mind. What if I don't like how it looks? What if I develop an allergic reaction to ink? What if, what if, what if... Ah, forget it - life is short!

For those who know me, the designs of my tattooes reflect me. Sorry if you were expecting flashy or crazy designs. ;)

Here's my first tattoo...

To explain what "that" is...this is the sign for "I love you" in finger sticks. My wife got the mirrored image on her left shoulder because of how we sleep in the bed - my right shoulder touches her left shoulder. Sweet, huh? ;)

Here's the actual sign (not my hand) below.

...and here's my second tattoo.

The letters are Greek, saying "Kappa Phi Theta". Before you jump in to say "You got that wrong, it is supposed to say 'Phi Theta Kappa' which is a honors society for community college students", I belong to a now-defunct fraternity called Kappa Phi Theta. My wife is a member of Phi Theta Kappa. Trust me, I know the difference. ;)

The woman who did the tattoo work was fascinated with me and she kept asking us all kinds of questions. We both answered everything and threw in some random information like how long we have been married, kids, blah blah. Even other artists listened in on us and asked us few things.

As for my inking experience, it hurt a little bit but it was really nothing to me. Felt weird, as if the skin was being pulled instead of the "skipping across" sensation. Had slight burning sensation but I recovered right away and I am not feeling any pain now.

What did you think of my tattooes? Simple, I know...but fits me perfectly. ;)

Formspring Q & A #8

Q: When did you learn to how to sign?

A: That's the shortest question I've ever had. Here's my shortest answer - when I was 25 years old.

-Editor's note: I am on vacation as of today and will not be returning until the end of the month. I will respond when I can. Enjoy!

My unusual writing style

Editor's note - oops, I scheduled this for 6 PM, not AM. Sorry about the delay!

I keep hearing from my readers about my unusual writing style. I never learned grammar...because I happened to be where I wasn't supposed to be and got moved up a level earlier than scheduled.

That day in the fall, I didn't feel like being outside during recess and I was wandering around on third floor at my deaf school when a teacher poked her head out of a conference room and saw me. She asked me to come in and there was a bunch of college students sitting there. The teacher told me to wait here and left me with the college students. We stared at each other, wordlessly. The teacher came back few minutes later with a 13 year old male student in tow and he was 3 years older than me.

The teacher wrote down "infrequent" on the blackboard and asked the 13 year old student to explain that word. He tried to bluff his way through but it was clear that he didn't know what that word meant. I was asked to explain and I wrote down "not often, rare, uncommon". The teacher was astounded by my precise definition. She asked me to put it in a sentence. I wrote down "it is infrequent for me to skip recess." Next week, I was moved from Intermediate to Advanced.

So, how did I learn? I acquired my understanding of grammar from reading books, long before that teacher pulled me in for a demonstration. I remember begging my mom to buy a book here and there. I'd sit down and read books & magazines at stores, libraries, and other people's homes.

One day, a family with twins moved in next door and I happily discovered a room in there, filled with books in stacks as tall as me. Every day, I would go over and upon seeing me, the mother would step aside and let me go to that room upstairs. I would go through their books like there was no tomorrow. My mom always checked that house first to see if I was there before looking for me elsewhere in the neighborhood.

My unusual writiing style is the melting pot of all these authors' construction of and creative use of words. I was fascinated by that, but I didn't discover my flair for writing until I went to high school. When I entered 9th grade, my reading level was determined to be at college level. When I arrived at my first college, I was tested for English (my reading level had progressed to "beyond college"). I was placed in a writing class that had students in their 20's. I was the only minor in that class. LOL

My knowledge of grammar was not without frustrations - I didn't learn the difference between "a" and "an" until I was about 30 when my wife explained to me why I shouldn't say "an house" (versus "an hour"). I was relying on my memory of how people would use on certain words. Nobody had thought of telling me this; maybe they figured it was a quirk of mine.