Me and the Deaf kids

This might seem rude, but I'm contemplating wearing some kind of hearing protection when I go hang out with the Deaf kids on Tuesdays. They're all five and six years old, and their favorite way of getting my attention is screaming. They also do this to each other, but because they're Deaf, it doesn't work. With me, it works just fine -- in that For the love of god, you're KILLING my ears kind of way.

I can't really avoid a physical reaction when I hear something that loud, so when they see me startle, they know I've heard them. And I learned some time ago that if I ignore them, they will just do it again. It's not like you can train children like you can train dogs....

I used to have this co-worker who was intolerant of noise. Even though our office was hardly a loud place, he was fond of wearing those industrial noise-cancelling ear phones that I use in the woodshop. I always thought he was a bit of a freak in that regard, but lately, I've been eyeing the pair hanging on my mitre saw and thinking Those kids are louder than my saw sometimes. Louder than being at the gun range. Maybe I should just wear some ear plugs at school this afternoon.

But I don't because I'm sure it would be a cultural faux pas of some magnitude.

In other news, one of the little Deaf boys, who I'll call Supah-Cute, has revealed a propensity for dressing up as a girl. Every week when it's time to play, he digs through the dress-up clothes and turns himself into a little woman. Today, he put on a lovely black and white evening dress, a pair of white heals and a tiara, and he carted around two purses with him. He's five, right. And I am not going to be telling him he can't dress as a girl if he wants to do that.

But today, an intern asked me how old Supah-Cute is and, upon learning, said, "Then I *guess* that behavior is OK still, huh?"

That got my hackles up, and I said, Even if that behavior lasted several more years, it would be OK. It's really only a concern when the child is insisting he's *is* the opposite sex, not just that he likes dressing that way. When the other kids start noticing and teasing him about it, he'll probably stop doing it. But us trying to force him to stop this would probably only cause him stress. And, frankly, I was thinking, So what if he wants to dress like that for the rest of his life? I really don't know why we care so much about this.

The woman in charge of the group heard me talking to the intern, raised her eyebrows at me and said, "I guess you would know."

I have no idea what she meant by that, because I don't think she knows I'm actually studying this stuff. So I said, Last week I attended a lecture on gender disorder. This does not even begin to approach the criteria for that. And anway, look at him. He's just *so* Breakfast at Tiffany's today that it's irresistable. He looked like Audrey Hepburn, I tell you. And he sure does know how to swing a purse.

My heart goes out to him, though. It's already hard enough to be Deaf in this Hearing world, but being a little gay Deaf drag queen or whatever is one tough row to hoe. Good thing he's Supah-Cute. And he *does* look good in a dress.