C'est la vie sourde

Ésa es la vida sorda.
It's the deaf life.

Once in a while, I learn something new, incorporate it, and express my opinion on it. That moment occurred just minutes ago, and involved something I've experienced so often that once I actually stopped and analyzed it, makes life so ridiculously difficult.

When someone mentioned the name Jeffrey, I thought I heard Jennifer, but I heard wrong. Then I tried again, and thought I heard "Stephanie." The third try, I got it right, but the more you think about being deaf, the more you realize how much lipreading is guesswork.

I also have trouble speaking up in class. Despite my speech therapist's best effort to coax me out to voice my opinion--and I would very much like to, sometimes--I never found a way to do just that because I just don't want to speak on anything that I've heard nothing of what other classmates have said. I had this hit me twice: first, when in Chinese Christian School, a private school, a teacher asked how many disciples Jesus Christ had, and I didn't know; second, when in class, I gave out the same answer to the question that other students had given. That embarrassed me.

That's the deaf life. C'est la vie sourde.