let's do this okay now you have a de person in a car today I'm going to be talking about something that I have noticed as a dep person every time I meet a hearing person for the first time I have to give them the heads up that I'm depth there are a lot of misconceptions about hearing it ja I don't know any sign language what am I going to do I want whoever's going to watch this in the future to look back and be like oh my gosh that's what you guys did what's up everyone welcome back to my channe
l sit down and make yourself comfortable because I'm I'm about to embarrass myself for your own entertainment because after all that's how YouTube works right my name is Jessica Flores I'm from San Francisco California I am an artist improviser comedian oh I do a whole bunch of stuff also I'm deaf oh my God can't believe my telling you guys this [Music] sh hi Jessica when I was growing up I grew up with a very wacky and Goofy family filled with [Music] storytellers your M we'll be dancing at the
re I have a mother who did Improv and she actually did a lot of improv shows in our basement when we were growing up yeah if you're looking for something different to do around the city then why not go where theater meets $3 beers she would bring us to comedy clubs and we'd watch her perform and give her advice on how her sets were doing when we were like five and six it was really weird what oh you think I should go up there huh really bicycle you thought you were staring at my P so I I got pr
etty lucky with my family they already were so animated they like to like speak with their hands they like to like make faces like I could tell if they're happy or if they're sad you know like they're very animated and um my mom especially going back to her when she talked to me she she's very she can gesture that helped me out so much growing up I I literally wish everyone gestured as much as my family did National Television what a guy the first time I realized that I had a hearing loss I didn
't even remember it until a few years ago I was at church and me and my group of classmates we were supposed to be doing some kind of singing I remember looking at everybody else and everybody's singing and I had this pamphlet in my hand this little booklet I look down and there's like different songs on it and stuff and I was like I don't even know where we are I'm trying to like you know keep up with everybody and I'm kind of giggling about it but I'm also like hiding my face because I didn't
know what the heck was going on my first grade teacher was like she needs to take a hearing test or else she's going to stay back a grade and they were like okay will do it then when we went to take my hearing test and actually see an audiologist they were like uh what do you mean she has a hearing loss what and then that's when they found out it impacted their life in a big way and you know they they really didn't know what to do they said you had a profound depthness in one side especially it
totally shocked us because there was nobody in our family family that was deaf um on either side of our family and we didn't really know anyone that was deaf and plus they were kind of pitching the school was pitching Well's heart of hearing which they didn't really consider deaf I could see it was very stressful at times you let your guard down and you were running to keep up and that was so very hard to deal with and understand they didn't have resources like there's a deaf Center there's deaf
people out there you know there's sign language they didn't connect us with anyone like that it was kind of just like oh she has hearing loss get her some hearing aids make her take up speech therapy she'll be good that didn't really work you would like to tell me what this is this is not a chsu this is actually my first par of panades that I've ever gotten in my life and I think I got them around 1994 these little brown penades I remember the first thing that I heard with these was the sound o
f the water fountain that was outside the audiologist office I remember pressing the button and then it was like and I was like what the heck and my mom was like it's the water fountain it's making noise and I was like I never knew water fountains made noise I needed the sound of water fountains in my [Music] life I started doing art ever since I was younger I remember my grandma would always like put crayons and Pastels in my hand and just be like okay I guess you know I remember people in high
school being like can you draw this celebrity for me for my binder and be like okay I guess I really like drawing monsters or flowers I'm really big on drawing flowers architecture this is actually all the houses that I've ever lived in in San Francisco only one of them is in Pacifica there's 17 and my mom claims that I'm missing one I think drawing to me is a way to capture the way that I observe the world I don't know I just I really like keeping little things like this because that's kind of
what my grandma did for me when she saved all of my old drawings I keep them because that's where I [Music] [Laughter] [Music] started my mom actually enrolled me in an improv class so much fun in those classes it says that You' shoplifted twice what do you have to say about that I did I was like this is what I love doing I love acting and comedy and just making people laugh I would get a thrill out of taking those classes oh my God that that's me I had so much fun doing that even if I couldn't
hear them there was a bigger part of me that was like I'm going to keep doing this I'm going to find a way to make it work cuz if I quit now I'm setting limits on myself and I was like I can't do that anymore from there I went on to train at ight citizen Brigade in La for a while I did Groundlings and I'm also doing killing my Lobster in San Francisco all with interpreters and I'm going to keep going with it and hopefully I'll graduate from all the schools [Music] a hey everybody lately uh I've
been realizing that there's been a lot of people who are like where the hell has jica been um my first YouTube video I've been working I did a response video there was this other de you her name's Ricky pointer she was like oh you know share your experiences of why YouTube's captions are not that great Clos captions are extremely important because they help us feel equal to the rest of society I don't know about you guys but I've definitely had a couple of experiences where I was not offered an
y Clos captions in some of the videos that I watched for class or at the movie theaters and I felt left out I guess people liked it and I was like why not share more of my experiences please please please please please I want them to like remember why they should caption their content I want them to remember why death people do Drive I want them to remember what's the difference between open captions and closed captions I want them to remember it movie theat that provide open caption movies for
the depth in the heart appear hearing are amazing I'm going to just tell it how it is but I'm also going to use comedy as a way to make these topics these heavy topics more digestible the pandemic kind of inspired me because you know I stopped going out and I was watching more and more TV who wasn't and I remember watching a show and being like why is there no de shows why is there no shows that have completely an entire dep cast why you know what I have time I've done YouTube I wrote my own scr
ipts there I edited captioned everything why not try to write a film so I wrote an entire film and from there I was like if I can write an entire screenplay I can do it there's nobody stopping me again but myself I can do it currently I'm working on a couple of TV show ideas that will have a lot of De actors in it today in film and TV shows I slowly see we're welcoming de actors and that is cool but are they they made for a hearing audience or are they made for a deaf audience we got to start in
viting people with disabilities into the entertainment industry into different businesses if we want to start creating like a more accessible future we have to start inviting the people that need the accessible future I'm just going to start kicking down the worst oh I'm tired of waiting behind the door I'm like no I want people know I'm here like kick it [Music] open over the summer I was able to get a writing Fellowship that was super cool um it kind of gave me more of a guidance of where I ca
n take my projects and how I can improve my stories and putting together pitch decks and pil and stuff I I learned a lot I want to see a deaf NASA astronaut on the screen I want to see like the deaf lawyer I want to see a deaf tooth fairy or whatever it is like I want to see that on the screen yeah I hope this inspires people to share their own [Music] story [Music]
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