Randy attends class regularly. He also solves math problems on the blackboard, submits his spelling work on time and plays computer games with his classmates. He has excellent rapport with his classmates and usually shares his signs and sign language book with them while waiting for the bus. He also likes sneaking into neighbors' houses and trading toys with their kids.
Like typical 8-year-old boys, Randy has a mischievous streak. "Randy, at times, takes advantage of his disability," Tom Porter, principal of South Side School, says. "He pretends not to hear you. Sometimes he even turns off his hearing aid."
At home, Randy teaches sign language to his mother and brother. Though the future of Randy's hearing is uncertain, he takes it with a kind of child-like casualness. Once, when asked how he would feel if he should lose his hearing, "sad" was all he said.
"Mom, are you proud of me?" he asked her one day. "Yes, I am," she replied.
No sound could have been sweeter.
***Text and Photographs by Claro Cortes IV, cover story of The Columbia Missourian Magazine, Columbia, Missouri, USA, 1987.
Copyright © All photographs taken by Claro Cortes IV. All Rights Reserved.
© 1997 claro_cortes@hotmail.com
This page hosted by 
Get your own Free Home Page