I speak a lot of different languages. I used to write notes on ladyboss's Animal Crossing town's message board in German, just to be a douche. I'm no stranger to learning new words or dealing with language barriers, and let's face it, there's much less of a language barrier between me and most deaf people in the US than, say, me and a random hearing person from Kazakhstan. And it's not like I hadn't spoken to any deaf people before either, since I, you know, live in a world where deaf people exist. So, I wasn't at all nervous about not being able to communicate with my new roommates.
But when they moved in, I didn't know any sign at all.
Well, ok, that's not entirely true. I had a roommate back in the day who took a couple quarters of ASL at our community college, and she taught me how to say "I like your penis." The day my new roomies moved in, we got pizza and beer, and the three of us were sitting in the living room chatting via text. I told them about my extensive sign knowledge. They wanted to see it. I told High Maintenance Roommate that I liked his penis.
He said thank you.
For a few days there, while we were using our phones to talk about normal roommate stuff ("Help! The ceiling is caving in!"), I would try to make sign small talk by saying that I liked their stuff. I knew the words for "I like your," and then I would just point at whatever the thing was that I liked.
"I like your [car]."
"I like your [suitcase]."
"I like your [dog]."
The best moment of that phase of our cohabitation was when High Maintenance Roommate straightened his hair all fancy, and I tried to tell him I liked his hair and accidentally poked him in the forehead like a weirdo.
Once everyone was moved in and settled, we started hanging out more. A couple more verbs were added to my repertoire, and High Maintenance Roommate taught me the alphabet in exchange for cigarettes. Ladyboss knows quite a bit of ASL, so she helps me practice at work. I learn new words and whatnot on the interwebs, and from watching videos and TV shows with deaf actors (Switched at Birth, anyone?). I learned how to say "how do you say," so now I wander around the house like a really enthusiastic toddler, pointing at things and asking what they're called.
(I intentionally did not ask how to sign Call of Duty.)
It's a work in progress.
For a while, since the only noun I knew was "penis," I tried to work it in to what I was saying as often as possible. One of the first new words I learned was "worm," for "penis worm"- because we were watching Tremors, obviously.
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| THE GRABOID. Don't lie. You see it, too. |
Unsurprisingly, a lot of signs involve really complicated-to-the-uninitiated hand motions. Of the signs I've learned so far, one of the hardest ones for me to do is actually "roommate," because it involves locking all your fingers together in a funny position. Whenever I try to sign with deaf customers at my job, it always goes pretty well up until they ask where I learned, and I have to fumble my way through saying, "I have deaf roommates."
Both of my roommates are really good cooks, and High Maintenance in particular makes really good breakfast food, so I asked him how to say all the breakfast foods. I didn't get the sign for "egg," which involves kind of swooping your fingers apart, so he did a really elaborate pantomime of breaking an egg open to show where it came from. I relayed that particular story to my sister, who laughed at me and said:
"See, other people are able to cook things, so they wouldn't be confused by what you do when you're cooking with eggs."
High and Low Maintenance Roommate fight over how to say things a lot (High grew up going to deaf schools, and Low went to hearing schools with formal interpreters), and sometimes, there just straight-up isn't a word in ASL for whatever I'm trying to say. I asked how to say "unicorn," and neither of them knew, so I put my hand on my forehead, with my finger out in the #1 position, to simulate a horn. They were like, "Uh, no girl, that means horny." Later on, I was telling that exact story to some hearing friends, and I got a frantic text from Low Maintenance Roommate, who was sitting on the other side of the room:
"Dude! You're telling all those people you're horny right now!"
(A silly coincidence: I made almost the exact same mistake when I was first learning German, when I looked up a word for "excited" and accidentally ended up with the one that had Sexual Implications. Why is it always so easy to tell people you're horny!? Why!?)
The roommates and I still mostly chat via text, and mostly about things that have nothing to do with ASL, but I like learning the signs because it's faster and easier. I've picked up enough that I don't need to write for most of the basic stuff, because 1. I POP LANGUAGES LIKE VALIUMS and more importantly, 2. I'm lucky to have very kind and patient teacherfriends.
Though, really, the "Me & My Hearing Roommate Who Doesn't Sign Very Well" blog would probably be way more entertaining.
"DAY 34: ANY DAY NOW, SHE'LL BE RUNNING OUT OF WAYS TO GRAMMATICALLY COMBINE THE SIX SIGNS SHE KNOWS.
MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON OUR SOULS."
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