My wife and I are not hearing-impaired (well, perhaps selectively so from time to time), but we’re going to the DeafNation Expo at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton today.
Many of my wife’s 12 siblings are deaf. One of my wife’s professors thought there might be a connection to the pesticides her Mexican-immigrant parents were exposed to during decades of working in the fields. Nobody in the family’s ever really bothered to follow that up; like most Latinos of my experience, they accept life as it is and move on.
Anyway, we’re going to be seeing my brother-in-law, professional magician Sammy Ruiz Jr., perform a magic show this afternoon at DeafNation. Should be fun. And the whole thing’s free and open to the general public, too, which I like.
Sammy was crowned World Deaf Magician a couple years back at the international competition in Moscow, Russia. He’s good.
And maybe we’ll get to see SuperDeafy! I can dance like that.
Notice how quiet the expo is in the video at the SuperDeafy link. Deaf events are nice in that way.
Many years ago, I was an interpreter. The biggest compliment I used to get was the surprise from the hearing impaired that I was actually hearing.
Sometimes I’m sad I got out of practice. Every here and there I’ll see some people signing and I still get the gist of what they’re saying, but alas I have a hard time remembering enough to be effective any more.