Sound and Fury

I really enjoyed watching this film and it really made me realize how little I am exposed to the deaf world. It is kind of sad to think about actually. I am privileged with being slightly more exposed than others because I have a deaf neighbor. He is a great guy and has a great family. His wife and two children can hear so I can imagine the frustration he has at times, but his wife teaches sign language and is exposed to the deaf almost everyday. Their kids are still pretty young and don't understand the whole situation, but they already know more sign language than most of us do. He is a normal guy and should be treated that way. He can easily understand what I am saying by reading my lips and he is very good at speaking; it's not hard to understand at all. Sound and Fury did an excellent job with touching both sides of the story and incorporating both of the discourses. I don't fully understand the difficulty there is with deciding to obtain a cochlear implant, however, based on the film and talking with my neighbor, I can assume it is one of the hardest decisions a person may have to make.

This is why I don't really know whether I support the cochlear implant or whether I think it is a bad decision. My first assumption before even watching the film was to get the implant. I couldn't even understand why someone would not want to get it. Hearing is such a beautiful thing. But once I watched the film, I realized how proud the deaf are of their culture. They have never known of anything different and they are perfectly fine without hearing. However, their is a lot of difficulties they may run into in life that will cause them to struggle more than others. Communicating with family members and friends or getting a decent paying job could be a challenge in some cases. I can understand if the entire family is deaf why you would not support the implant. If a child did decide to get the implant, they would not lose their deaf culture because they still need to communicate with their family , but they would probably have a difficult time learning how to speak due to the fact that their parents are deaf.

I have finally made up my decision and I support the cochlear implant. I think allowing the child to decide on their own could be beneficial or at least not implant a small baby. I also think both the family and the child needs to learn sign language. They are still deaf when the implant is taken out, and they need to be able to communicate and understand the culture. It is important that the family members learn the language as well. The implant does not need to take away their deaf culture if they don't allow it to, and in the end it will probably make their life much easier. They can communicate with the deaf and the hearing and hopefully have to deal with less stress. With being able to hear, they can work in any field and do just as much as any one of us could.

I know the cochlear implant is a very diverse topic and obviously deaf families or family members might have different views. I can see both sides of the story and I really do not know what the better decision would be. But does anyone really?  However, in the long run I really do think that this new technology could change a persons life forever and it should be something parents take into consideration.

My fear...of Mice!!

I'm not one to be afraid of many things, in fact, the only thing I could really think of being afraid of would be being trapped under water and not being able to reach the surface for a nice breath of air...but isn't that something everyone would fear? I mean who really wants to be trapped under water? Soo after ruling that out, along with clowns, the dark, snakes, and heights, I decided that the only thing left to fear was simply...mice! You know, the little creatures that squeak, run a million times faster than you ever could, and are basically..well..ugly!! This is how my fear of mice began, now don't get too excited, this story really is not that great.

Picture this..its the time of year for the family festival, except this is actually when the family festival is fun to go to. It was the five aside soccer tournament (the tournament where like everyone got a trophy..i swear 10th place might have gotten one) and  oh yeah it was at the ice arena or the soccer fields if that is what you would rather like to call it. So I was in the five-aside tournament, I don't know exactly how old I was, maybe 3rd or 4th grade. But alls I do know is that my team was stacked! I was a thirsty girl, I mean it takes a lot of water to chase around a ball all day. Okay getting to the point...I had to pee! I decided to take the lazy way out and skip the actual semi-nice bathrooms in the ice arena and go for the quality porta potties! (I'm not that type of girl that really cares where she goes to the bathroom, a forest would be sufficient) The line was actually pretty backed up so I was eying the first one to free up. I waited patiently doing that little "I have to pee dance" the one where you jump back and forth on your tip toes, the one that doesn't actually help at all. When the first door opened, I ran right up to it and switched the little handle thinger to "occupied." I sat down to begin my pee, when all of a sudden a mouse crawled out of this hole located in the bottom right corner. I'm sitting on the seat (feet in the air) and this nasty little thing is spastically and frantically circling the floor of my porta potty. Screaming, I  hop up, try to pull my shorts up and do that "I have to pee dance" all over again. Except this time it was the "Eww I don't want that thing to touch me dance." Keep in mind this is all  happening in like the course of 5 seconds! Finally the mouse crawled back into his hiding space and I sprinted out of there. I mean it's one thing to have to pee in a porta potty, but another to have to be trapped with a mouse.

Ever sense I really have not been too found of mice. Porta potties on the other hand...I could care less about! But mice...eww! Not to mention they also seem to find my garage a nice little place to call home. Soooo...mice...you can go somewhere else to live, somewhere far far far away! That's my story of why I don't really like mice! I told you it really wasn't that exciting!