I worked as a camp counselor during the summers of my college days to earn money to pay for my books and incidental expenses. My first summer I was presented with two boys who were profoundly hard of hearing (that was the parents' choice of wording). Their parents explained to me that they didn't want me treating them any differently than the other kids because they had enough of that already and it was time to let them be "regular kids." They told me to look at it as if I had two basically good boys who just didn't listen too well. I did my best to do as they asked. It was difficult considering there were 13 boys in my charge and the other 11 naturally noticed something was different when they saw the hearing aides. There was the typical teasing and the not so typical scare when one of the aides stopped working in the midst of an impromptu water balloon fight (I was known from then on as the fastest draw of the hair dryer in the camp - don't laugh [OK, do], it worked). What really turned the tide was a bad storm where the thunder and lightning was so bad we could not hear each other. The two boys weren't bothered in the least. They were conversing with sign language. The other 11 picked up on that and saw the 2 as having something they did not instead of the reverse as had been the case until then. The 2 boys took great delight in teaching the sign alphabet and some simple words to the rest of us. From then on they were fully a part of "the gang" and no one of them ever considered them handicapped again.