Dale Earnhardt Jr. Once Learned Sign Language So He Could Communicate With A Deaf Fan

What a guy.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was NASCAR‘s Most Popular Driver for 15 years in a row before he retired back in 2017, and it’s not really hard to see why. He seems like a regular, down to earth dude who loves to drink beer and do normal people stuff, and just happens to be one of the biggest names in NASCAR.

Since he stepped away from driving, Dale Jr. has remained one of the leading voices of the sport, not only as a broadcaster but with his Dirty Mo Media network and his insanely popular podcast, The Dale Jr. Download.

And this week on his podcast that he hosts alongside his wife Amy Earnhardt, Bless Your ‘Hardt, Dale Jr. told a story that showed just why he’s one of NASCAR’s most beloved personalities.

During the conversation, she recalled going out to dinner recently when a fan – who happened to be deaf – recognized Dale Jr. at the restaurant:

“This gentleman happens to notice Dale, and he’s deaf, he can’t hear, but he is very, very lively. In a very animated way showing that he knows who Dale is. He’s doing the race car hands, he’s pointing at the bartender like, ‘Look at this guy.’

So we kind of have a moment with him… He sits down, we all go sit to eat, and he kinda keeps glancing over at Dale. And at one point Dale’s like, ‘Let’s buy his dinner.’… So I go to the bartender…and I’m like, ‘Hey, we want to discreetly pay for his tab when he’s ready.'”

Well as it turns out the guy wasn’t there to eat, because when they got the tab they realized that the man hadn’t ordered any food: Just $150 worth of margaritas.

Have yourself a day, king.

Anyway, Dale and Amy pay their bills and the man comes over to thank them:

“On the tab they wrote, ‘Dale Earnhardt paid for your dinner.’ So of course he comes over and he wants to say thank you. He wants to take a picture or something with us… He’s teaching the girls how to do a little sign language, teaching them how to say ‘I love you’ and trying to teach them sign language.”

But that’s when Dale surprised his wife with some sign language of his own:

“Well I say ‘thank you,’ that’s the only thing I remember from school. And I turn to Dale and I think he’s just going to do the wave off, and he starts doing this whole thing. I’m like, ‘Whoa, where did you pull that out of? I know you know a bunch of random sh-t but I didn’t know you knew how to sign language too.

And he had told him to have a nice day in sign language.”

Well as it turns out, Dale had learned some sign language early in his career – so that he could communicate with another fan who was deaf:

“Back in the ’90s, around 1994, 95, I was racing Myrtle Beach Speedway. And one of the fans that came every single weekend was deaf, and brought he a sign book. He was telling me, ‘Man, I would like it if you might learn a couple signs so we could communicate.’…

He gave me that book and I learned a couple things… I remember that was like, he was telling me, ‘This would be neat for me if you could just say hello, or whatever.’

And I thought, ‘Man, of course, I get it.'”

Of course that was a long time ago, and Dale admits that he had forgotten what he had learned – so when he encountered the deaf fan at dinner recently, he quickly pulled up a video on YouTube for a quick refresher:

“When Amy walked over to get his tab, I pulled up a video on YouTube and thought I would try to learn quickly how to say, ‘Have a nice day.’ So I watched the video on YouTube real quick and was thinking in my mind how to mimic the motions.

I was like, ‘Alright, when he comes over here I’ll just make sure I can sign to him so he’ll feel seen or heard.'”

What a great dude. Going out of his way to make his fans feel comfortable, even when he’s out at dinner with his family. And you know that made that guy’s whole year.

Easy to see why he was NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver for so long.

The post Dale Earnhardt Jr. Once Learned Sign Language So He Could Communicate With A Deaf Fan first appeared on Whiskey Riff.