Putting the Five Together
sooo. bathroom, help, wait, okay, thank you, i'm sorry. five lessons, five signs, and if you've been doing the homework you've got all of them somewhere in your hands even if they're a little rusty.
today's not a new sign day. today's the day we make them work together, because that's where it actually falls apart for most people. you can nail a sign by itself in a quiet room and then freeze the second you need two of them back to back in front of an actual human.
so let's fix that now, while it's cheap to fix.
why this is its own lesson
knowing five signs and being able to use five signs are different skills. it's like knowing five words in spanish versus being able to order food with them. the words aren't the hard part. the stringing-together is the hard part.
and there's a real trap here: when you chain signs together, everybody's instinct is to speed up. like you're trying to get through the sentence before you forget the next word. that's exactly backwards. slow and clear reads as someone who knows what they're doing. fast and mushy reads as someone who's lost. i'd rather watch you sign three words clean than five words fast.
the combos to practice
start pairing these up. do each one slow, with your face doing its job (raised eyebrows for a question, that little furrow for concern), and don't rush the transition between signs.
- "help — wait" — someone looks overwhelmed, you're telling them you'll help, just give it a second.
- "okay?" (as a question, eyebrows up) — wait for a response — thank you if they say yes.
- "i'm sorry — help?" — you bumped into someone, you're offering.
- "bathroom — wait — okay" — kid needs the bathroom, you need one second to wrap something up, then you're good to go.
do these standing up, not sitting at a table staring at your hands. movement helps it stick.
a quick one on handshape, because i earned this lesson the hard way
sooo. i have to tell on myself here.
a while back i was hanging out with my mom — she's in her sixties, sharp as anything, but brand new to any of this — and i went to sign "fine," like, i'm doing fine, everything's good. except i got the handshape wrong. and location. and what came out was not "fine." it was something significantly less appropriate, signed at full volume in front of my own mother, who just blinked at me.
had to stop and explain the difference. at 63-year-old-parent volume. not my finest teaching moment, but a real one.
here's what i want you to take from that: handshape matters, and location matters. it's not close-enough charades. two signs can look almost identical and mean completely different things depending on where your hand sits or how your fingers are curled. you will mess this up at some point. everybody does. i did it in front of my own mom. the fix isn't "be more careful forever," the fix is just — go slow enough that you can check yourself, and don't panic when it happens. it will happen.
practicing at home
grab whoever's around — kid, spouse, roommate, doesn't matter if they know any signs or not. have them play a little scene:
- they walk up looking stressed. you sign "okay?" they nod or shake their head. you respond with help or wait.
- they act like they need the bathroom right now. you sign wait, then okay.
- one of you "bumps" the other. sorry, then help offered.
thirty seconds a scene. do it three or four times. the goal isn't to get fancy, the goal is to get your hands moving from one sign into the next without a big dead pause in between where you're mentally flipping through flashcards.
if you've got a mirror handy, catch yourself doing it once. see if your face matches what your hands are saying. that's the whole ballgame, honestly — your face is doing half the grammar here, and it's real easy to forget it's even attached to you.
a caution, small but real
when you're practicing fast combos, people start getting sloppy with handshape exactly like i did with my mom. if you're not sure you've got a sign right, slow way down and check it against what you learned in the earlier lessons rather than guessing your way through at speed. wrong-and-slow is fixable. wrong-and-fast just becomes a habit, and habits are annoying to unlearn later.
before next time
pick two of the combos above and run them with somebody at home, out loud with your hands, not just in your head. doesn't need to be perfect. it just needs to happen once outside this room.
~terry