I recently received the stinkiest stink eye I’ve ever gotten from an ambulance driver. Before I enter an intersection, even if the light is green, I look both ways; it’s a built-in safety feature I have as a deaf person. I can’t think of a time I’ve witnessed a deaf friend crossing a street or stepping off a curb without first looking both ways.
Yesterday, while riding with Daniel, as I entered an intersection on a green light, I noticed an ambulance making its way through cars that had pulled over to the curb on the far side of the street I was about to cross. I stopped before the ambulance reached the intersection. Still, because everyone else had heard the sirens earlier, I must’ve looked for a monster for even daring to roll into the intersection. That stink eye was so powerful that Daniel noticed it from a few meters back.
Rory explained to me today how sirens have gotten increasingly louder over the years as modern cars have improved their soundproofing. The sirens, Rory says, are so noisy that they hurt most pedestrian’s ears.
I have deaf friends who can hear these sirens before they see them, but deaf as fuck people like me and Zoée exist. We’ve had to reconcile with the fact that, by existing in public, we’ll inevitably offend people without effort. Whenever we notice hearing people shooting us a dirty look, our thoughts automatically go to: they must have tried talking to us. Neither of us wear a red cap, nor do we own a shirt with something offensive written on it, so what else could it be?
All the worse, I was dressed in my cycling kit — a “spandex warrior,” as grumpy drivers like to call recreational cyclists. At that moment, I didn’t look like a regular jerk. I was a jerk cyclist.
Life goes on — for me and hopefully for whoever needed that ambulance.
The roomie sent me a photo of a hummingbird that had nested in a tree outside our door a few weeks ago.
Yet whenever I looked for the nest in this tree, I couldn’t spot it. Finally, tonight, the roomie pointed it out to me, and a second nest he had found recently in a different tree. Do hummingbirds make that much noise? They blend in with their surroundings well and are impossibly small!
The roomie admitted he seemed to have a talent for spotting birds and other wildlife. It makes me want to work on my mindfulness. I’ve started leaving my phone in my bedroom more often when I’m home, rather than keeping it with me, so I can focus on something else.
I was mindful enough to notice a small injured bird on the edge of a sidewalk in front of the bike rental shop during my lunch break. I summoned Matt, who was working in the rental shop, to bear witness to this scene. I don’t have a view of the sidewalk from my workplace, but Matt does. I also needed a second opinion on what to do. I didn’t want to move the bird, but it wasn’t in a safe place.
The roomie, although a keen eye for spotting wildlife, didn’t have much in the way of offering advice on how to rescue wildlife. It wasn’t like this bird was the endangered whooping crane, so I wasn’t about to go deep into my mission to save it.
We went with…
Pylons.
When I checked back in 15 minutes, Matt told me the pylons were a great idea because people just think there’s something wrong with the sidewalk.
An extra 15 minutes later, Matt returned the pylons to me as the bird had disappeared. I have no happy ending to this mini-story: just an ending.
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