I read your post with extreme interest and came to a better understanding about being deaf. Thank you for that. I have a few questions. Can you sign? Can yo

I read your post with extreme interest and came to a better understanding about being deaf. Thank you for that. I have a few questions. Can you sign? Can you read lips? Can you pronounce words? The reason I ask is I once had a deaf friend. He didn't sign, or at least didn't try to with people that didn't know ASL, but he could read lips. He could read lips so well that he could tell if you were just mouthing a word or actually saying it out loud. He would often admonish us if we simply mouthed a word to him. :) It got to the point where the only impediment to ongoing conversations with him, was that he had to be looking at you. He was so good at reading lips that he would often pickup parts of conversations he wasn't a part of ( like "overhearing" one ). If he wanted to know what was going on, he simply had to look in people's direction and read their lips. It was awkward for the first day or two. Him looking right at you, you getting over mouthing words to him, him replying to you in the tone that only a person who can't hear their own words would. To me, it was no different than learning to speak with a foreigner but the added benefit was that we seemed to pick it up after no more than a week of solid talking, laughing, mocking, and understanding. I seem to recall him telling me to shutup on more than one occasion. Coming out of his mouth, it sounded more like "shauuuuup" with no real emphasis on the T or the P, but I knew what he meant. I don't profess to know whether or not he's gone through the same loneliness as you, but it seems that he found a way to be a part of "normal" that worked for him and for the people around him. Does this mean I wouldn't have learned sign language? No. This also wasn't a work environment and it predates any technological "advancements" that may be at your disposal now.