but that’s a good thing.

It was an assessment test to see how well I know sign language. Failing means that I get to start in the beginners, level 1, from the ground-up, don’t know squat class. Which is exactly where I need to be.

The commitment is two hours a week and will garner me a certified – hopefully gem-encrusted – certificate at the end. Learning sign-language – in this case, ASL or American Sign Language, the standard in North America – is something I never would have considered on my own, but it ties directly into my current work and my future profession and so am going ahead with the class with bells on.

As a full-fledged Cajun, talking with my hands is nothing new. Although it does have the downside of rewarding me with coffee in the lap on long drives when I don’t have a change of clothes. Learning more hand-signing may exponentially increase the frequency of these episodes, but at least a deaf person happening to be driving by will be able to understand the swears. Yes, learning sign language is absolutely identical to learning any second language. You have to double check strange, new randomly seen words with someone you really trust lest you say condom instead of appointment, for instance.

As I use it and learn more words and actually converse, my love for the language grows. I only get to work with the deaf patients on occasion but I puff up proudly when I manage haphazardly to get my meaning across. Turns out that the signed alphabet is absolutely essential to master first because even if you do make a mistake like the one I mentioned above or don’t know the actual word, at least you can correct the hysterically laughing person by finger-spelling the word you really meant. Or at least that’s what I hear.

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