MrShineyhead's Travels:
Deaf Dog in the Park | State Fair | MrWildWildWest | Gone Fishin' | The Pirate | Me Here!

Tales in The Dark:
The Mountain Lion | Ice Lake | Civil War | Lorelei | The Goblins

With a special ASL translation of:
The Star-Spangled Banner

State Fair

I went to an oral school when I was a kid and this story is from an event back then.
All of us little deaf kids are sitting in class, watching the teacher do the exaggerated mouth movement thing as she tells us WE ARE GOING TO THE STATE FAIR TOMORROW. We are all very jazzed about that idea and the next morning we are ready to go. The kids are all excited, we’re all lined up waiting for the little yellow school bus and when it pulls up I head for the door. The teacher stops me to tell me that I hafta have a buddy and that I hafta hold hands with my buddy. Disgusting! I hate holding hands with those kids. They stick their fingers up their noses and who wants to touch that… seriously disgusting!

So we all take hold of our buddy’s hand and we get onto the bus and get seated. Have you ever noticed how riding a school bus is never a smooth ride? It’s always very bumpy and you get jostled like crazy. So we’re going along on our bouncy little school bus on our way to the state fair. Of course, there’s nobody there in the mornings. They pretty much just open the place up for the school kids, so the only vehicles around are rows of school buses. We get off the bus - Don’t forget to hold hands! and we start to take off to check out the fair.

Oh, remember, back in the day, hearing aids were really weird, There were these two boxy pieces on your chest with wires that go up to your ears. but not nice short wires that fit perfectly to your ears, they’re like really long wires that you gotta wind around your head and then on up to your ears. So as we’re taking off the teacher reaches out and grabs the wires that are going around my head, practically choking me to death.

Well, let me back up a bit and explain how we used to get at the teacher. With the microphone system that was in use at that time, the teacher would have a wire around her neck.To be annoying we would run past so she would have to react suddenly, and that movement would cause a yank on the cord, sorta like being grabbed from behind by the wires around our head.
We start walking around the fair, having a great time. There’s so much stuff to see. There’s the animal section with cows, horses, goats, and stuff. A vegetable area that had huge melons! And there was an area full of jams with free, very tasty samples. We checked out the trophies awarded for different exhibits. We were having a good ol’ time running around.

Then we get to the pig section. There’s a bunch of ‘em in stalls surrounded by railings. We see this one humongous pig, just sitting in his stall, eating.

Now, there’s this one kid in our class who was so obnoxious. Just because he had high tech hearing aids. Instead of the wires around the head and the harness and all, he had little over the ear hearing aids. And he was all about showin’ em off. He’d fiddle with the aids, making it clear that they were new and very cool. So he climbs up and sits on the railing, looking at this pig. And I’m wondering what would happen if he fell? So I’m watching him fuss with his fancy hearing aids, and I get a wonderfully horrible idea. With one quick flick at his hearing aid, the thing went flying! It sailed off his ear and landed smack in the pig’s pen. The kid starts bawling, and I’m kinda freaking out ‘cause the pig takes a look at the hearing aid, gets up and wanders over to take a taste. He takes a big chomp and the kid’s just wailing.

The teacher and the principal come running, the principal vaults over the railing, grabs onto the pig, opens up its snout and snatches the hearing aid out of its mouth. It’s all slimy and gross and the principal wipes if off and fits it back on the kid. And it still totally worked! Even after the pig had taken a sample of it! That’s a day that sticks with me!

Translation done by: Cathi Bouton, M.A., CI and CT, ASLTA Professional