Keith Wann... Over 20 Years of ASL CODA Comedy

Thank you for learning my parent’s language

Growing up as a coda I don’t remember officially learning ASL from my parents. There was never a moment where they sat me down and taught a formal lesson. It was just day to day communication about life and love. I wasn’t taught classifiers one week and then the cardinal number system the next week, we just watched our parents model the language to us as they told us to clean our rooms, do our homework, and stop pulling the dog’s tail. So growing up when someone asked ‘how hard was it to learn asl’ I always answered I don’t know I didn’t have the other experience so I can’t compare.  

There was also an us versus them, deaf versus hearing vibe, not directly from my parents or their friends. They never sat us down and said ‘ don’t trust hearing’ - it was more of the frustration I could see on my dads face when he was passed over for managerial positions, the patience on my moms face as hearing people leaned in and spoke louder, slower, and enunciated the word so my ‘deaf’ parents could understand, but that was never my parents request.
Looking back as a child of the 70’s ‘Deaf’ wasn’t mainstreamed yet, no Oscar awards being won, no movies about us, no one flashing the ILY hand during sports celebrations. Well, maybe Gene Simmons at a Kiss concert but my parents wouldn’t allow me to listen to that. They knew I was hearing and said I liked ‘music’ they could only base their opinions on album covers, and instead of Kiss or ACDC it was Donnie and Marie Osmond or the soundtrack to Grease.
As a child during that time I ‘heard’ people talk about my parents ‘look at them deaf and dumb people’, and I would quickly scan the room looking for the dumb people. Deaf-mutes, Deaf-retards, these were words people were saying about my parents, my foundation, my role-models, my world. So it was easy to slide into the us versus them way of thinking. I grew up in a huge Deaf Community with many codas as childhood friends, we went to deaf church together and even lived in the same apartment complexes, our own community. When us little codas would be out and about and heard any hearing kid make those comments about our parents we would all start signing to each other using the signs for stupid and dumb back at them and felt like we got one up on them.

I also might have been a little less accepting of hearing signers, laughing at how they signed wrong, slow, and had the forever scared look in their eyes when my parents signed back. At deaf church as a child I often sat in the back row playing with my hot wheels and Star Wars action figures and would on occasion have an ASL student ask me to be quiet. I again felt it was me versus them. Not in a mean way but as a native user laughing at those who dared tried to learn. It even showed up in my comedy act later in life when I had a whole encore bit about ASL students, and comedy was all about relating. Even with my relationships with hearing women I felt a little ‘ugh’ that I had to interpret for them to my parents, they never learned sign language past the ‘my name is s-o-o-n-t-o-b-e-f-o-r-g-o-t-t-e-n!’

But one day as there is in most life-changing stories, I was able to relate back when after a show I was driving with my soon-to-be wife who was an established and certified asl interpreter and owned her own agency during conversation say “I learned your parents language to give them more access…”. That blew me away, that changed my perspective, that rocked my world. Here are a group of people who are learning my parents language, who are overcoming their fears and showing up to deaf social events to practice, who take ASL for 4 semesters to 4 years. My wife also stated that in her class of 30 ITP students only 2 of them went on to be working interpreters. The end result what? - they now provide access to my parents for their job interviews, doctor appointments, churches, and so much more. They, you stayed. You took time away from your family to learn my family’s language. My negative childhood memories of hearing people suddenly changed - there are still ignorant people but the majority of us have good intentions. Those kids mocking my parents were covering up their insecurities and looking to put themselves higher on the pecking order(yeah interpreting child development classes really helps). Those asl students at our church really wanted to learn. Those ex-girlfriends…nah we will leave that behind still.

You took time out of your schedule, you planned your credits to include ASL classes, you pursued your interpreting degree, you got certified, and the result is my parents can now get those promotions at work, therapy or counseling, know the song lyrics and let their son keep their AC/DC cassette tapes. And our world has changed because of this - so many people learned asl and didn’t become interpreters but went on into other industries but still use conversational asl to talk with their coworkers, classmates, and people out in public areas. I don’t hear those negative remarks of Deaf and dumb but instead, “Oh I wish I learned that - I wanted to learn sign language”.

Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for the times you walked into your classroom with the intentions to learn ASL, to practice ASL, to do your ASL story in front of the class while your legs were shaking.

You have given back to me a gift. I have never had the patience to teach someone asl, I had my baggage.

Around 2006 I was going through a divorce and was given some horrific news - the kind where I crawled into bed and stayed in a fetal position crying. I was supposed to head out to Texas the next day for a comedy show, but I felt like I couldn’t be funny anymore. I called my friend and she said I needed to go because maybe there was a person there who was also having a bad day and needed the laugh. So I got on the flight, checked in to the hotel and I remember sitting there on the bed dreading the show. Later that night from the stage I did the first joke - some google eyes and a silly classifier - and the audience laughed, which lifted my spirits - I went on to do my regular show, storytelling and improv moments with audience members. That show fed my soul.

Several years later at another ASL event where I was voice interpreting for a Deaf performer I had a Deaf person come up to me and say thank you. I laughed and said you are thanking me for voicing? She said “no for the show you did in Texas years ago. I have a hearing sister who never learned sign language growing up with me, basics but not conversational level. I dragged her along that night to your show and she was one of the volunteers you picked to come on stage. After that show she was so inspired she went back and signed up for ASL classes and kept it a secret for two years until one Thanksgiving day as we were sitting around the table she started fluently signing to me. We had a great conversation. Thank you for bringing two sisters closer together.”

In my pain I was able to help another’s pain.

Growing up us versus them, became a us together - you are providing access, you are inspiring others to learn, you are helping my dad get that promotion, you are signing directly to my mom…and telling her how bad the acdc albums are for young minds like mine.