Queue arguing

I'm currently on holiday in America. At the minute I'm in LA. Having such a great time. Went to Universal Studio today. It was such a fun day. There was only one instance where my deafness caused me some problems.

I was standing in a queue for one of the attractions, when a group of about 20 people pushed their way to the front. It was definitely annoying. But I wasn't going to make an issue of it. I was still quite close to the front of the queue and was in holiday mode. It wasn't a big deal.

However, an American woman at the front thought otherwise. She started shouting at the people that had pushed in. She had every right to do so, as they were in the wrong. It got very heated. And several times she was pointing at me.

I couldn't hear what she was saying. Everyone around me was shouting and making noise, there was no way I could distinguish between her and them. Then a porter came out to see what the fuss was about. The woman talked to him for a while and kept pointing at me.

I could not hear a word of what was going on. I was getting slightly nervous - surely this woman didn't think that I had pushed to the front and was singling me out?

Then the porter turned to me and said something. Everyone else turned to look at me as well.

I had no idea what he said. Everyone was waiting for some kind of answer. Some people were glaring at me.

Thoughts going through my mind; I haven't done anything! Out of everyone here, why did that woman have to choose the deaf girl to make an example of? Everyone is staring at me, agh!

So I gave the only answer I could; 'I'm deaf, I don't know what you're saying.'

Some people went bright red in embarrassment. I felt slightly relieved - now at least I wasn't the only one in the crowd with a face the colour of a tomato!

Eventually though, things were cleared up. It turned out the woman was complaining on my behalf. She had said that I had been standing in the queue for 30 minutes and others had pushed in. It wasn't fair on me and everyone else that had been standing in line. The porter merely wanted to know if this was true.

And that was the end of that. I was allowed to go in ahead of the people that pushed in, and found my seat, relieved to be out of the spotlight.

I was quite nervous there for a while - I had absolutely no idea what was going on around me, if people were angry at me, if they thought I had done something wrong etc. And since I was alone, I had no hearing friends or family to ask what was going on.

But luckily everything was cleared up in the end and no harm was done, and the woman had been speaking out on my behalf, which was nice.

Deaf Girl