I'm actually not deaf, though I am hearing impaired and have been for as long as I can recall. I don't wear a hearing aid, but I have an armory full of different ways to ask "I'm sorry, could you say that again?" I'm not very good over the phone, but one nice thing about my cell phone is that I can turn the volume up pretty high. If you're talking to me and I'm looking at you, chances are I'll hear you just fine as often as not. Other times, I pick up context clues and try to guess what you're saying. I can't read lips, but the combination of facial expression, nature of the conversation, and the few words I do here will give me enough information to formulate a response. If it doesn't strike me as important, I'll just gauge what kind of question or statement it is and come up with an answer, like "yeah" or "sounds good."

I was at the supermarket today talking to the Vietnamese co-owner. and she asked me a question. She is a soft-spoken woman with an accent, and it's frequent that she's trying to make light conversation, but I can rarely hear her. She asked me a question and I said "Yeah," which was not the answer she was looking for. She just looked at me blankly.

I apologized and asker her to repeat the question, but I couldn't hear her again. I think she thought that her accent was too thick, so she start talking more slowly (good)... and more softly (very bad). She repeated it four or five times, each one more soft than the last, and we both became increasingly embarassed. Me because of my hearing and she because she was sure it was her accent. The worst part of all was that I knew it was just a question that she was asking just to be polite.

Sure enough, the guy behind me (whom she was serving while talking to me) translated: "What does your jacket say?"

"Oh, University of Houston"

She smiled, I smiled, and I went on my merry way.