Tales from the obecity 4: A guy named Aaaa My city has basically given in to obesity, though there are still a few subcultures where the majority of people are not fat. The Deaf community is one of those. Yes, there are some fat old people, but they're generally smaller than the standard fare here. Of course, any decent ASL class would require their students to go to a few Deaf events, and the classes at the local high schools are no exception. They are in general very fat, and also quite uniformly not familiar with the language. Tonight was Deaf coffee, and I thought I'd lucked out when I walked into Starbucks and saw only students from a private school in a nearby town. They are uniformly thin and actually care about learning the language and culture. We're all signing when a very fat boy comes over and says (out loud) something about Deaf. One of the students signs "Yes" and he grabs the nearest chair and sits down, without even asking if it was taken (fortunately, it wasn't). He then slowly signs out "Hello, my name is Aaaa" [sic]. His fingers were so swollen that he couldn't even spell out his own name. I think most of us could tell what he was trying to sign out, but it was bad. We then went around introducing ourselves, and in the middle of this he just starts to drink whatever it was he had in that cup. He wasn't looking at us at all. When we finish introductions, he signs out "My make isn't sexy" [sic] and goes over the the counter to presumably ask for a sexier make. He does come back eventually, and, at this point, the group is talking about how their school had a fire drill last week and the fire alarm in their school didn't flash, just rang. Aaaa then chimes in that his school had a fire drill yesterday. Why his school had students practice losing their jobs I don't know. At this point I'm thinking he has to be a troll because no ASL class would ever let a student get away with this little signing ability, when suddenly all of the other students just look at him. Aaaa then pulls out his phone, presses it, and then says (aloud) something. I ask him to sign it and he hands me a piece of paper. Apparently his class required him to be at a Deaf event for a minimum of half an hour, and he had to sign with someone who wasn't another student during that time. Those were literally the only requirements. At the bottom of a page was a small space for the signature of a deaf person. I say I can't do that on a technicality, but Aaaa then goes over to someone else who begrudgingly gives him the signature, and then he gets into the passenger seat in a car and leaves. Basically, an ASL student came to Deaf coffee, is so fat he can't even give a name, has horribly broken ASL, barely signed at all, and then asks me for my signature so he can complete an assignment for his class after he manages to achieve the absolute minimum requirements. If this is the future, it isn't looking too bright.