Guys, I have to tell you a story about probably my worst forehead-slappin’ experience with deafness…
I was 19, and driving an hour-long commute home from the bars in Detroit (they never card you there) at 3am in my old ‘86 Grand Am. Here I am, slightly buzzed, cruising along the highway - hoping to god that the parents weren’t up waiting for me. At a red light, I happened to glance to my right, and found myself looking straight into the eyes of a cop. My heart skips a beat, and as the light turns green I drive away, only to notice the cruiser following me closely (sh*t!). Sure enough, the dreaded lights and siren go on - I get pulled over.
Two cops climb out of the cruiser and walk over. At this point, I’m VERY nervous because if you get caught underaged drinking in MI, they impound your car and throw you in jail for 90 days. Turns out, that was the least of my problems. As one of the cops proceeded to shine a flashlight into my car, the other approached my window.
“Hi officer, just so you know, I am hearing-impaired and cannot hear well so I might ask you to repeat yourself often, and I have to see your face for lipreading…” (sweet as pie)
“You have a burnt-out headlight. License and registration.”
So I hand over my stuff, and the two cops walk back to their car. Ten minutes go by and I’m sitting there wondering why is this taking so long?
Suddenly, I’m hearing a voice in the open air - confused I look out the window but no one’s there. A mini-second later, it dawned upon me that the cop was speaking to me thru his loudspeaker from his cruiser! As if I was going to hear that? Shock gave way to anger as I sat there and debated how to handle this situation. Images from the show “Cops” flashed thru my mind as I considered my options, fearing that any unexpected moves on my part would result in being body-tackled and handcuffed. What the heck was he saying to me anyways?
So I just sat there - hoping that the ignorant cops would finally get a clue. More minutes go by, and he’s STILL trying to tell me something. Anger gave in to ragin’-pissed-off-indignity; all that pent-up anger of being deaf was surging up - so I blew out of my car, furiously marched over to the cop car in my vinyl club pants and stillettos - and started screaming at the cops for their lack of brains and haven’t they gotten any training in how to handle deaf people. Here I was, a little 19 yr-old, hopping up and down in a screaming tantrum at the police at 3:30am - who knows what the passerbys were thinking - it was exactly a scene straight out of “Cops”.
And you know what they did? After I said my piece of the century - they simply handed over a ticket and drove off, leaving me standing in bewilderment on the side of the highway.
I think that was the only time I really blew up in frustration at someone for not being considerate. The fact that a COP couldn’t even be considerate blew my mind.
Oy, so that’s the story. Anyone else have one to share?
August 24th, 2005 at 10:04 am
Hehe one time I was in a car with one of my friends, a big guy. We had pulled over so that we could talk more easily- the overhead light, and such. Apparently we weren’t supposed to be “parked” where we were parked, so a cop came to make us move. Small town cops suck, though. Instead of just making us move, he gave my friend a pat-search, and then came over to my window and gestured to me to roll it down. I did. He shined a light in my face and started talking at me.
Being shocked by my sudden blindness, I didn’t even notice that he was talking. Apparently my friend yelled “She’s deaf!” at this point. And the guy’s still shining his light in my face. *snicker*
Finally he shines the light on HIS OWN face, flinching from the brightness, and mouths VERRRRRY VERRRRRY SLOWLY (that agitating way that clueless hearing people have) “ARRRE YOUUU HEEERE OF YOUUUUR OWWWN FREEE WILL?”
I was like… “Uhh… yes.”
I’m not sure what the hell he thought was going on, or if he thought that a poor deaf girl had been kidnapped by a hulking giant, or what.
*Definitely* not as bad as your experience.
I would have done the same thing you did. The loudspeaker. *GRR* *AMAZING*.
I’ve read a lot of stories of deaf people being arrested because their accents are mistaken for “drugged slurring” or whatnot. It wouldn’t shock me if a cop shouted “HANDS OVER YOUR HEAD OR WE’LL SHOOT!”, etc. and then just shot someone. I live in fear of that.
August 24th, 2005 at 10:16 am
Yeah! That’s happened to me, too - being checked out while “parked”. You know, what’s the point of the whole flashlight-in-the-face deal? It’s not even a normal flashlight - it’s one of those superbig Magnalite babies with 10″ lens - do they want me to go blind as well?
The guy that I was with at those times also had to yell “She’s DEAF!” while he was being body-slammed frisked on the hood - hehe I laugh when I remember that!