ISD (I was Skinny Dippin’)
The Source
Perhaps this is not the most appropriate way to help the Illinois School for the Deaf celebrate its 175th anniversary, but my most vivid memory of ISD concerns being naked. I’ll get to that later. My college group spent a great deal of time on the ISD campus since several members of my literary society lived and worked their to help pay their tuition. In fact, several of the guys later went into deaf education. It was a win-win for everyone. And for years my Triopia students were often fairly proficient in signing with the state school right in our community. Again, ISD has been win-win for our area since it’s inception. Now . . . about being naked. No, maybe later. . . One of the truly God Moments at our summer Green Pastures Performing Arts camp occurred when Michael was dropped off by his parents. We had no idea that Michael was deaf and on that particular week we had no staff members with any knowledge of signing. Keep in mind that this was a performing arts camp. We sing, we dance, we play musical instruments and perform theatre. The ability to hear may not exactly be a strict requirement but to be deaf at a camp full of sound puts anyone at a disadvantage. So . . . we spent the week writing notes back and forth. Michael would write a note to me and I’d scribble things back to him. He thought it was funny when I told him that it would help if he’d brought a translator. He wrote me a note indicating that with my handwriting it was he who was in most need of an interpreter. The last night of camp found us gathered around a campfire, singing, praying, and generally doing the stereotypical camp things. The kids had practiced their various arts all week and this was the night they’d give their final presentations. Sometime toward the end of the evening Michael sidled over to me and handed me a note. It said, “I’ve written a song for God. Can I sing it?” Uh . . . I was a bit stunned. Michael had no spoken language that anyone could understand, but he had a song and by golly we were going to hear it. What followed was surely one of the most holy moments I’ve ever experienced. Michael stood in the circle of kids around the fire and sung his song. He understood the words, God understood the words, and the rest of us were completely deaf. It was beautiful. Not a dry eye in that part of Morgan county on that cool June evening. Okay, from the holy to the not-so. Naked at ISD. . . The school had a huge swimming pool in the gym area and our 8th-grade basketball coach told us that if we won our first game of the PMSC tournament we could go swimming after the game. This was a big deal for a country boy in the middle of winter. Only one slight catch: ISD at that time allowed no suits in the pool. You had to swim in the nude. Times have changed. Kids today won’t even shower in each other’s presence but back then it wasn’t such a big deal. Through some miracle short of the Second Coming, Perry Grade School actually won a game that night. It may have been our only victory of the season. All we could think about at the final buzzer was the heady delight of jumping into a warm swimming pool in the middle of winter. It didn’t matter about not wearing a swimsuit. We didn’t normally pack those in our gym bags anyway. It was a tournament and thus several teams were in the ISD gym that night. All night long the busses would unload from New Berlin, Meredosia, Winchester, and Franklin. And of course each team would bring its coaches, fans, and . . . cheerleaders. It takes a lot of organization and space to host a basketball tournament and I don’t know which of the great gods of basketball was fooling around that night, but just as the Perry Pirates basketball team jumped naked into the ISD water, the Our Saviors cheerleaders came marching through the pool area. This posed a problem. Those of us who could swim quickly paddled off toward the deep end. A wading pool offers little protection. What do you do? Do you wave? Do you dive to the bottom and hold your breath? I do know that you hope the Our Saviors girls don’t tarry long or try to inspect the bottom of the pool. There I was, a poor Presbyterian boy treading water and slowly beginning to wrinkle in the presence of a very attractive group of young Catholic ladies. Congrats to ISD on it’s 175th! May you forever keep your head above water.