Running ASL
Holding, Cory

>>CORY: My name is Cory, you want my last name?

>>SPEAKER: Mhh hmm.

>>CORY: Holding, and my story is about learning American Sign Language. So I had a cousin who was born deaf and she learned not to read lips but to sign from infancy and I saw this cousin and her family about every week of my life and her life, she was about three or four years younger than me. I think the only words that we learned well - although we were given books and encouraged to read on our own - the only words we really came to know well were the interestingly iconic signs for like this sign which is like to go to the bathroom or like this sign which is another way for going to the bathroom. We also learned happy birthday, which was something like that, and it was awkward growing up because my brothers and my cousins and I would play together and we just didn't know how to talk with her. So I think it was maybe middle school when I really started to kind of figure out the alphabet. It doesn't take long, I think it takes anyone about twenty minutes at the most to learn sign language of the alphabet. It was kind of awful that it was that late in her life that I learned the alphabet but the way that I learned it was through running in gym class and track. So for every time my foot would fall I would do a letter with one of my hands until I got to the point where I was really fast with finger spelling. So I think the only thing I would evolve from there is probably by the end of eighth grade track I was very fluent in finger spelling and I was more readily able to communicate with her but it wasn't until undergrad that I actually took a course in American Sign Language and learned properly many signs and once I did that I would just listen to my Walkman so much, it's a problem and I'm going to have hearing loss because of how much I listen to my Walkman, so what I would do when I would listen to my Walkman was just sign along. So by that I became fluent in it. So I think that that's it. Thank you.