Words. They are hard to listen if you can’t really hear. People talk all the time. I see some people talk for hours and they never have to worry if the other person is understanding them. But, maybe they do? I don’t know. Literally, I’m deaf.

Being deaf is hard, but waking up is always a struggle. That’s for everyone. I probably shouldn’t be the one complaining. I’m home schooled. Well, until tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’m going to be going to an actual school. A school that is not specifically made for the people who can’t hear. I have read many things about a regular school, like that school is similar to a prison cell. I hope that’s not true. But what is far worse is that I won’t be able to easily communicate with my other pupils.

Today, my mom and I were preparing for tomorrow. We bought pencils, books, and tons of other stuff. It was hard shopping because when I pointed to something I wanted like an eraser shaped like a unicorn, my mom shook her head. Yet, we still bought 10 cases of the worlds ugliest black pens.

One weird event of the day was when we were driving home, we saw this strange girl. She was throwing starfish into the ocean! People were speaking to her, but she wasn’t listening.








********************************************************

Today is the first day of school. I’m completely nervous and my palms are sweating like crazy. When mom woke me up, I couldn’t stop worrying. Does my hair look weird? As I walked through the building, I saw her. The girl who was throwing starfish into the sea. She was wearing the weirdest pink, rubber boots and a striped blue and white dress. Strange.

I don’t have any regular classes with the other students in my grade. I have to go to the special ed room, where they teach us things like the alphabet. When I’m entering the room, I see her again. The starfish girl. She was also deaf. That’s probably why she wasn’t responding to anyone at the beach. I decided to go up to her. “Hi”, I said.

“Hi,” she said back.

“Why did you throw the starfish into the sea?”

“Because if I didn’t, they would all die”

“How do you know?”

“Because if a human was deprived of oxygen wouldn’t they die? How is that not the same with starfish? Don’t they need water to breath?”

“I guess so. But you know you are not going to save them all.”

“ I know, but I’ll still make a difference for the ones that I do throw in the water.”

That was the start of our first conversation. The “weird girl” and I learn so much about each other. For instance, I learn that her name is Emmie. Well, her real name is Emily, but she believes that that name makes her sound rich and snotty. And she knows for a fact that she is not either of those.

After school, she took me to the beach. We started to throw beached starfish into the water, because we couldn’t bear to let anymore of them die. Then, we got onto a very different idea. She wondered how many grains of sand were on this beach. Now mind you that this beach wasn’t giant. However, there are probably millions of billions of grains of sand on that beach. But Emmie wanted to count them anyway.

Many times in this process, we lost count so we had to start over. But we didn’t give up. We stayed for hours there counting the grains of sand. At 8:00, both of our parents started complaining and they ordered us home. We both made a pact to do the same thing tomorrow.

Emmie and I became the best of friends. We did the strangest things, like seeing how much cereal we would have to eat to see if we could win a prize or writing a symphony to play for the deaf. Emmie taught me so much, like that it is a proven fact that everyone consumes about 6 spiders a year when you are sleeping!

When we started to grow older, our friendship just became closer. Life was great. Until one day.

It was a regular day, when I was eating my breakfast alone. My mom rushed through the door. She was smiling. My mom told me that I was eligible for a new type of surgery and that I may soon be able to hear. Like anyone else, I was very excited that I would be able to hear what I have been missing out my whole life.

I told my mom to step on the gas so I could get to go to school and tell Emmie that I could, maybe, hear soon. When I got there she was crying. I asked her what was wrong. She told me that death was coming for her and this is her last day of school until she is better. I spent the whole day with her making sure she was ok. We also spent time after school. We decided to watch the sunset. Emmie described how beautiful a sunset is and how beautiful the stars look in the sky. Even though I have seen a sunset hundreds of times, this was the best one I probably had ever seen. The collage of light colors fading of into the distance was just astonishing.

And after the sunset, I looked at every star sparkled in it’s own way. “You know, wouldn’t it be cool if one day, we could have a constellation named after us. Just to see in the sky that the constellation would be ours and no one would be able to change that.”, Emmie said. I agreed. So the rest of the night we decided to claim our stars. We named our constellation Cornelia, the “leader of the stars” and made up a story about how it was formed and everything. And while making that story, we had the time of our life. That was the last day I ever saw Emmie.

Emmie died a week later. I was never new all the details, but I was so distrot I refused to eat and I didn’t get out of bed. Finally, a few days later my mom woke me up. “We need to get out of this house. You are a wreck.” I moaned. I struggled out of bed and we walked to the car. As we were driving, it didn’t occur to me that I didn’t know where we were going.

We parked and I saw we were at the beach. “Mom, why are we here?”

“Because we need to save some starfish” she replied. I was fairly reluctant to do this activity because I only did this with Emmie. My mom didn’t care though. She just said “Remember every time you through a starfish into that ocean, you are saving it’s life. That makes you a leader. And Emmie was a leader. She constantly helped people and did what she thought was right”. My mom handed my a starfish for me to throw. “ I think what Emmie wants you to do now is go be a leader like her and go out and make a difference in the world. One starfish at a time.”

At that moment, the sun was going down and the stars were starting to come out. I sat down to see all the stars together. At that moment, I swear, I saw Emmie and my star, Cornelia, the star leader. We shouldn’t have named that star Cornelia. We should have named it Emmie, the Starleader. Because Emmie was the real leader.

Emmie showed so many good leadership traits. Like not to care about other opinions when you know yours is right. And even if you couldn’t save the universe, you can make a difference for someone.

As I write this, many years later, I can now hear. But after that experience, I learned that I could finally see for the first time. I could see what life is really about. Being a leader and making a difference in someone’s life.