Deaf Identities in the Making: Local Lives, Transnational Connections

5. WAY UP: ON DEAF ETHNIFICATION

146 WAY UP: ON DEAF ETHNIFICATION It is a nuclear war and everyone on earth perishes except for two men, one Deaf and one hearing. God appears before them and offers to grant one of them three wishes, with the understanding that the other man would then get double of whatever the first man wished for. Out of pity, God told the Deaf man he could be first. The hearing man agreed since he also felt bad for the Deaf man and besides, he would get double of everything. The Deaf man thought a bit, then asked for four beautiful houses. Presto! Four magnificent mansions appeared in front of the Deaf man, and eight in front of the hearing man. The Deaf man then asked for 200 beautiful Deaf women. And again, presto, the 200 appeared before his eyes, and 400 in front of the hearing man. Coming to the third wish, the Deaf man paused and went into deep thought. Finally , with a smile on his face, he asked for one testicle to disappear. And lo and behold, both of the hearing man’s testicles disappeared! From then on, all future generations would be Deaf and it would become a Deaf world. (LIND 1994, 70–71) This is one of the jokes Lisa Lind presents in her article “Laughing Our Way Up: Deaf Superiority through Humor.” She gave me this article 5 quite late in the process of jointly working on the structure of her life story, and it is informative of the way she has come to think about herself as a Deaf person. I met both Lisa and Bill for the first time at a DAF gathering at Ål in 1999 and was able to recruit them for my research project. They both thought my research was rather biased. BILL’S STORY: THE TROUBLESHOOTER Bill is in his early thirties and was born in Oslo. His presentation of personal family relations is limited, or rather, he considered family relations unimportant in this context. His decision to tell his story was first and foremost politically motivated, as well as an opportunity to correct my biases . He does, however, present some of his personal biography. I have a sister who is older than I, and just as deaf. There was no natural sign language environment around me, but my parents went to a kind of sign language course—but in fact, it was more signs plus speech with the Norwegian language as a base. Then I went to a kindergarten (Voldsløkka) with a sign language environment . At school age, I was enrolled at the deaf school, Skådalen . I remember my first teacher very well, whom we had in first and second grade. This hearing man was clear and very visual , for instance, when he taught us about the seasons. He had a talent for drama and made an everlasting imprint on my mind. His teaching gave meaning and I learned a lot. I had a superb start at school. But the teachers were not fluent in sign language. From the second grade and until the end of school, I had twenty- five different teachers, all of them hearing! So I think I should say to all you hearing people. Thanks for your help! This highly ironic statement is symptomatic of much of his outlook on life, and on the hearing, helping world in particular. Their help was in fact more a “pain in the ass” than anything else, and he did not regard school as a learning environment after second grade: Much of the teaching went far above my head. The reason was bad signing, a lot of oral Norwegian and much lip reading. I simply failed to comprehend the curriculum. I cannot remember WAY UP 147 a thing of what I learned at that school after second grade. I remember chaos. I had English for seven years, but with a poor result : I know no words in English. I don’t understand a shit. There were a lot of words on the blackboard, but their connections and meanings were never explained. It is also a sad fact that I learned nothing about Deaf history. But we loved the breaks. Then we could come together and sign. But the classroom was a terrible place. I can remember “Shame on you!” and that the teacher dragged me by the ears, and ordered us to sit...