Iām deaf. About 25 years ago, I was working for a little while as a classroom aide at a program that worked with deaf children with multiple disabilities. All the teachers and other classroom aides were hearing, but they all could sign. Ā Not at native signing level, but enough to carry on a basic conversation.
So, one evening, all us adults bring all the kids to a special one-night camping trip. All the kids are put to sleep, which frees up the adults to get into a circle and have some fun to ourselves for a while. People start talking, except they were forgetting to sign. Ā So I reminded them to please sign so I could understand them. Ā One of them told me that, no, they werenāt going to sign because this was our night to have fun and not have to think about communication.
So no one signed all night. They talked, they laughed, they had fun. I sat, feeling lost and cut off and betrayed. I remember wishing I had had the nerve to say, āNo, what you mean is, you want a night in which everyone EXCEPT ME gets to not think about communication.ā
I think sometimes when non-disabled people insist that we are too obsessed with our disability, what they REALLY mean is, āI wish you would stop reminding me that I have a shared responsibility as a fellow member of society to proactively ensure that we all have an opportunity to be engaged in society. Ā I wish you would just pretend to not have a disability so I can pretend that I donāt have to do anything to enable you to do the same things the rest of us are doing.ā
The luxury of not needing to think about disability in a society that is designed to lock us on the cold outside is a non-disabled privilege.Ā
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