Cuz I haven't seen one deaf person in real life for my entire life. I know that deaf people are out there. But like where though? They aren't grocery shopping. They aren't clothes shopping. They're not at the parks.
I've seen blind people. No deaf people though.
Have you ever met a deaf person before?
How can you tell a deaf person from a distance by sight alone? They're pretty sneaky about hiding it, you know.
Just a month or so ago I was shopping a local grocer's, and I had to grab something off the shelf that just happened to have maybe three employees stocking the shelves around it, so I said, "'scuse me," while carefully reaching around one guy, who paused to let me grab whatever it was, and said "thank you" while his back was turned, and one of the other guys said, "he's deaf." Luckily, I know a couple letters, "thank you" and "BS" in ASL, so I caught his eye and gestured my thanks and he smiled.
Oh, there are several sub-genres on YT that hit me in the feels, and deaf people getting their cochlear implants activated and "hearing" for the first time and being overwhelmed by emotion is one of them.
Yes. My childhood friend's sibling was deaf. And as an adult, I used to see deaf people signing all the time on my bus when I rode it. My coworker had a deaf relative, therefore knew sign language. And the Walking Dead TV show had a few deaf actors. Ditto the CODA movie and its French version.
Perhaps fewer deaf people because of breakthroughs with surgery?
BTW, I attempted to learn sign language 2 years ago. I gave up since I would rarely use it.