Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread (MOT)
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So yesterday, Joy of Fishes had a very inspiring diary about a young deaf African kid getting his first lessons in sign language. Which was kind of ironic, because I had planned to write a diary about my experience Saturday with a couple which were deaf and mute. I recounted this experience in a
comment in Joy's diary, which would have been the bones of today's MOT.
Anyways, I decided that I was going to keep the thread running, and went to youtube
to look for some signing lessons, and you can see a tutorial below. Interestingly, maybe 50% of the signs ( these are American signing language) are close to what you would do if you wanted to communicate with a deaf person with no signing knowledge. For example, the stop sign is the the time out sign tilted 90 degrees.
When I was communicating with the my German deaf mute friends, I learnt a few signs quite quickly. A spouse is indicated by an index finger pointing to a ring finger, a smiley or happy is the thumb on one side and two fingers on the other side drawn down a chin.
I cannot comprehend how hard it must be to live in an environment where one or more of your senses is totally absent. Imagine going to a club when you are deaf - if the sound is loud enough, you will sense the bass beat in your stomach, but the melody is absent.
If you lose your sense of taste, what is the point of going to restaurants ( Mrs F has this problem, and unless the food is loaded with salt/sugar/chilli/vinegar it all tastes like cardboard.)
So, next time you come across a sensory deprived person, have a little sypathy and maybe reach out to them.
And just to add a musical note (h/t to PCarey who kinda started this trend of adding music to serious diaries) here is some Simon and Garfunkel to start your day.
Go kick the week's butt!