Third NFTA Meeting

Thursday, March 28th, I made my third attendance at the NFTA meeting.   I had no clue what was going to happen when I was there that time.    When I got to the meeting room, it was packed.   Thank god there was an empty chair for me to sit in.    There was another girl in a wheelchair that was partly deaf there.    It was nice to see her again too.  She was just starting to learn to speak sign language.   This time I decided not to be a chatterbox and to try to listen to what every one else was saying.

 

While I was there I noticed these people didn’t bring up stuff regarding deaf people.  The only time they seemed to mention the deaf society was whenever I was talking about it.   Other than that they would be discussing everything else.   The meeting wasn’t about me anyway.   Who am I to think that, so it’s okay.   I was just there to listen, and I tried to keep my mouth closed.    Last time I felt I took over the meeting by talking non- stop.  So I did my best to stay silent.

This time I managed to stay quiet for about 15 minutes.   By then I couldn’t wait any longer to say what I had to say.    Come on I wasn’t trying to be a show off.  There was just some things I had to get off my chest.   They weren’t talking about deaf people, so I interrupted and started a whole new topic.   I had no clue what they were talking about before.  It doesn’t matter, they all knew I was deaf.  What I was saying must have been off the point, of what they were discussing.    Since I was deaf, I can get away with it.

I made my announcement finally.   I told the NFTA staff, the directors of NFTA and whoever else was there to go and learn some sign language.   The top people who worked for NFTA that I never seen before looked at me.  So I told them you can go look on YouTube and learn it for free.  They just nodded, like okay.   Did you know that everything everyone says at the meeting gets recorded?   Well I knew I was being recorded word by word.  So I had to watch what I was saying.  It seems like I was telling some jokes at the meeting also.    Well that’s a good thing.    The girl in the wheelchair that was partly deaf looked at me in surprise.   I just think It would help the deaf customers if more people would make an effort to learn how to sign a few words.   So that was my speech at the NFTA meeting.  It probably had nothing to do with what they were discussing, but so what.  I said what I had to say.