A First Little Conversation, Start to Finish
sooo. here's where we stop collecting pieces and actually put one together.
we've got hello, how are you, my name is. we've got yes, no, i don't understand. we've got eyebrows doing the work of question marks. what we haven't done yet is string it all into one little conversation, start to finish, the way it'd actually happen if you ran into a deaf neighbor at the mailbox or a deaf coworker in the break room.
that's the whole lesson today. no new vocabulary to speak of. just putting the furniture in the room we already built.
the shape of a first conversation
almost every small talk exchange has the same bones, in any language:
- greeting
- how are you
- name exchange
- a little question about the other person
- a way to close it out
that's it. that's the skeleton. english speakers do this on autopilot and don't even notice the structure. in asl you're doing it consciously for a while, which feels clunky at first and then stops feeling clunky. everybody hits that wall around the same spot.
walking through it
here's a version you can actually run at home tonight, either in a mirror or roped into it with somebody at your kitchen table.
you: wave, or a little head nod if you're already making eye contact. sign HELLO.
them: HELLO back.
you: HOW YOU, eyebrows up, slight forward lean. this is a yes/no question so your face has to ask it, not just your hands.
them: GOOD, or FINE, or whatever, with a nod.
you: MY NAME [fingerspell your name, slow]. then a little pause, then point at them with an eyebrow raise. that point-plus-eyebrows is doing the job of "and you?" you don't need a separate sign for it. your face and a point cover it.
them: fingerspells their name back.
you: if you catch it, nod, maybe repeat a letter or two back to show you got it. if you don't catch it, that's YES NOT UNDERSTAND, PLEASE SLOW or just a scrunched face and a little "again?" gesture. we covered this. own it, don't panic, ask again.
you: NICE MEET YOU.
them: NICE MEET YOU back, usually with a smile that does half the sentence for them.
you: close it out. a little wave, or I-LOVE-YOU handshape if it's someone you're actually close to (that one's just for family and friends, not the guy at costco, to be clear).
That's a whole conversation. thirty seconds, maybe less. it will feel like more when you're doing it slow and careful, which is exactly how you should be doing it right now. remember the whole slow-is-faster thing we've talked about. clear and slow reads as somebody who knows what they're doing. fast and mushy reads as somebody who panicked and is now guessing.
a caution worth saying plainly
when you're first stringing signs together, there's a real temptation to rush through the parts you're less sure of, like you can mumble through the fingerspelling and speed past it before anyone notices. don't. if you don't know a name yet, slow down more, not less. rushing a sign you're shaky on is how you accidentally sign something else entirely. i've told you about the time i mixed up FINE with something a lot less appropriate in front of my own parent. handshape and location both matter, and blowing through them fast is exactly how that mistake happens.
the porch lesson
years back, before any of this was a class with a room number, i had three neighbors over on my porch on a random tuesday evening. no plan. i didn't have slides, i didn't have a syllabus, i just had the handful of signs i'd picked up for work and a folding chair situation that wasn't quite enough chairs. we just started doing hellos and names and how-are-yous back and forth, correcting each other, laughing when somebody's face didn't match their hands.
ninety minutes later everybody was still there. nobody wanted to leave. i remember standing up to get more drinks and thinking, huh, this is basically a whole thing, isn't it. that's the actual start of this class. not a curriculum. three people on folding chairs not wanting to go home yet.
i bring that up because that's exactly the size of thing you're building tonight. not a performance. not a test. just a little exchange with somebody, slow enough that it actually lands, casual enough that you both loosen up by the end of it.
practice at home
grab whoever's around — spouse, kid, roommate, the dog if nobody else is available, though the dog won't sign back — and run the whole five-step shape above. do it once fast and messy on purpose so you feel the difference. then do it again slow. notice how much better the slow one feels, both doing it and watching it.
if you're on your own tonight, do it in a mirror. i know that feels a little silly. i did the exact same thing the night i learned BATHROOM, standing in my bathroom mirror like an idiot, because i never wanted to be caught blank again. it works. nobody's watching. do the silly thing.
Before next time
try the full conversation on somebody who's never signed with you before, even just once, even if it's clumsy. next time we'll talk about what to do when it doesn't go smoothly, because that happens constantly and it's not a failure, it's just part of the deal.
~terry