Today my mother-in-law and I left Connor with Jeremy and spent eight hours out looking for patio furniture: a housewarming gift from Jer's parents and several other relatives. We're big on comparison shopping around here.
We finally cobbled together the perfect set with selections from three different stores, and the results are lovely! I'm sure we'll get a lot of enjoyment out of them this summer. When we were finished picking up the last piece we stopped by Caffe Adamo, one of Jer's and my many, many coffee shop hangouts, to rest our understandably weary legs. We were sipping our yummy drinks and chatting about our shopping trip when Mom noticed that the people behind us were using sign language. A young couple and an older man had come in separately and were having a conversation about signing classes in the area. I introduced myself and my mother-in-law, and the five of us proceeded to exchange pleasantries in a mix of ASL, SEE and PSE.
That's when the barista came out from behind the counter and started signing.
What are the odds of four different groups of people in a coffee shop independently of one another all knowing sign language-- especially since only two of them were Deaf? It's the frequency of encounters like this makes me sure we're living in the right town. One of the guys we talked to works at the YMCA that we visit all the time. This brings the number of people we've met in the past year who know either ASL or SEE and live in the Puyallup area to seventeen, and these are random encounters--we haven't even attended a Deaf coffee night!
~Jess
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3 comments:
I love that table!
What a cool experience. We never run into anyone in Jamestown... too rural, I guess. Lots of people with hearing aids, but they're all over the age of 70. We've run into a few kids in Buffalo with hearing aids, though, and it always causes a lot of excitement for both kids. I wish we had a more diverse signing/deaf community here!
1) Love the table, too -- beautiful!
2) What a great signing experience! I only live a half hour from Leah, so we're pretty much in the same boat.
3) Great picture of Connor in the previous post, and great news about his blossoming atheltic abilities.
That is incredible! We do use ASL to accent our talking with Emma and are in a fairly small state and a higher ASL population in our area and we rarely meet signers outside the planned local deaf school activities. Pretty cool that you are meeting people out and about and that you are holding your own with sign!
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