Gloria ~ May 6

 

THE RING CYCLE…PART TWO

 

So I wrote the TEDx and happily presented Ron with a ten page script.

 

And then we started rehearsing…and rehearsing…and rehearsing yet again. This was long distance as by then I was back in NYC and Ron was in Ohio and we were doing this by Face Time.

 

It was oddly slow going.  Of course I had the advantage as I wrote it and my training and experience enables me to memorise fairly quickly. But Ron was struggling and I could not seem to help, even with all my little tricks and techniques.

 

The answer to all this should have been obvious as I had actually written it into the show but did not relate it to the current issue.

 

English is not Ron’s first language!!

 

I knew that… I wrote that… and I just never put it together. 

 

We are both Codas, yes. But at opposite ends of the normal experience. Most grew up learning to both sign using ASL (American Sign Language) and to read and speak  English to some degree…to some level.  

 

I was at the extreme end because my mother’s family was sure she could not raise hearing children and threatened to take us away…being well educated her response to that was to never teach us to sign and to make sure we could read and speak fluently. Of course that meant she had to be the interpreter between her children and their father…but she saw no other way.

 

At the other extreme…Ron’s parents were non verbal deaf. They taught him to sign…and he picked up English from his grandfather and the tv and neighbours…but they could not help him learn to read.  And his early years in school were no help. The teachers paid extra attention to the Spanish kids and the Italian kids as they knew English was their second language. But they had no idea that ASL is not English  and so did not go out of their way to instruct him.

 

So he had to find his own way…and because he is inherently very bright...in the end he was  able to teach himself. 

 

So here I am giving him this script to memorise.

 

I sought advice from my Director who told me to leave him alone. Stop trying to use my training to help him. Let him do it his own way as he has always done and it will all work out.

 

And it did.

 

It was a heroic effort on his part. And he was flawless. I was the one who made a mistake but fortunately we were asked to do it again for a different audience the next day…and all went well.

 

TO BE CONTINUED…