Here is a post that might inspire you to learn sign language from a new perspective. - From time to time, individuals who work in jobs that serve the public go above and beyond the call of duty to be able to provide their customers with remarkable attention and care. One particular case involves 2 kind waitresses from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, who made a Hard-of-hearing boy’s 4th birthday a bed that he and his mother will never forget.

Octavius Mitchell Jr., along with his uncle and his mom, Shatika Dixon, recently frequented a Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Murfreesboro to celebrate the boy’s fourth birthday. Octavius has been deaf since birth. While they were having dinner, their server Kathryn Marasco noticed that Shatika was using sign language to communicate with her son. Kathryn likewise noticed that the son was wearing a hearing aid. As she stated, "I’m sitting there, and I’m watching from a distance, and the mom is signing to the little boy, [and] I noticed he had his hearing aids". She then decided to do something special to help little Octavius have an extra bit of excitement on his special day.

As soon as Kathryn understood that it was Octavius’ birthday and that he's hard of hearing, she asked her co-worker Brandie White if she knew how to say "Happy birthday" in sign language. Brandie said that she didn’t, however like Kathryn, she wanted to help Octavius experience an extra bit of fun during his birthday dinner.

Brandie, a speech-language pathology and audiology student at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, then went to YouTube on her phone. She and Kathryn wanted to learn a special phrase in sign language for the birthday boy.

After researching how to say "Happy birthday" in American Sign Language (ASL), Kathryn and Brandie quickly mastered all of the necessary hand gestures. The servers then went up to Octavius' table to show him what they had learned.

The 2 waitresses not only wished Octavius a happy birthday verbally. They even did it in one particular way that's special to him, hence putting a big smile on the boy’s face and even making his mom truly happy. ""Happy birthday," the servers signed in American Sign Language. The action delighted both Octavius and his mother. "Everybody thinks we’re crazy when we’re out talking and we’re signing. So it’s really important to me that someone noticed that and picked up on that and made that special just for him, my baby," Shatika stated.

Being a customer support representative for a local company, Shatika knows firsthand exactly how significant it is to continuously deliver the utmost in care for clients in all of the kinds of businesses. This background made her very appreciative of Kathryn and Brandie’s extraordinary act of compassion toward her boy. Shatika went on to say that the interaction with the servers was the first time anyone other than her and his teacher had used sign language with Octavius.

As in the case of Octavius, making contact with Deaf and Hard-of-hearing (HOH) people by means of ASL can certainly make them feel good and more fully included in the larger (hearing) society. By merely seeing individuals come in contact with them by using their language, the Deaf and HOH population can achieve a greater feeling of inclusion.

This view is shared by Vicki Robinson, a hearing individual who has been teaching physics to Deaf college students for over 4 decades. In response to the Quora question, "What do Deaf people think about people who aren’t deaf learning sign language?" Vicki wrote, "I’ll defer to the Deaf Quorans here for the definitive answer. But my experience is that Deaf people appreciate hearing people learning ASL."

Vicki also explains that her daughter’s case involves communicating with Deaf people out in the hearing community. Even so, every time a hearing individual who can sign goes into a spot where only Deaf individuals are present, the hearing individual should not think that they will be automatically greeted. This is because hearing people do not share Deaf people's life experiences. One example would be connecting to a small group of Deaf people at a club without a specific invite. So, in a Deaf space, it's better never to presume that one is accepted, even among people that one knows very well.