Sunday, September 19, 2010

Potty Hands


I'm learning American Sign Language, and, of course, this leads me to looking up the terms I use most frequently. The list keeps running, and I cannot wait to get my hands on a book of conversational sign language.

Here's the thing, andI'm not gonna lie--this list includes some not nice four-letter words.

The big surprise though, comes of course from the fact that I'm proving to be more embarrassed "saying" some of these words in ASL than I am verbalizing them in English.

They are incredibly literal.

It's one thing to let a sound fly out of your mouth--heck, we arrange and re-arrange sounds all the time. Language evolves and transcends, means one thing, means another, and changes drastically according to the generation. But placing my hands opposite on top of each other, jiggling them up and down a bit, and moving on to something equally literalized, and I'm blushing in my sweet, red, chipmunk-y cheeks.

Potty hands are turning out to be much messier than a potty mouth.

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