Interpreting The Sign

Last week a friend of mine, Ti, called inviting me to her class to talk about sign language. There was a slight urge to drop the offer, because I’m not a prominent person on the subject and I don’t think I know how to talk to a bunch of 8-year-old. I gave her the I’ll-check-my-schedule-and-get-back-to-you-later excuse, but the day after I insanely said yes.

I didn’t regret my decision, though. It turned out I did well, or rather my friends have prepared these kids amazingly well that I can relate with them easily. We talked about history, deaf people, practised alphabets, and small amount of vocabulary. These kids asked me many signs and sentences —like you’re beautiful, you’re tall, you’re naughty, you’re my friend, I like you, I like singing. The second they got the answers —and this is the amazing part—, they promptly signed them to their friends. They didn’t want the class to end (and I didn’t either), but I did have to go. They yelled thank you all the way I was leaving untill I disappeared behind the school walls. Thank God I forgot my magazine that I had to go back to the class for a quick last look at them. I kept that picture of them having lunch in my head safe and well.

I couldn’t get that class day off of my head. I kept thinking about that class and starting to trace back how on earth I ended up with this signing thing in the first place.

An Encounter of the Third Kind
My dad told me to be mindful of language. He taught me to love my language and to use others’ with respect. At the time I thought that by ‘language’, he meant speech —Indonesian, English, Japanese, Chinese, etc. Later on, still on my early age, I found that also a language is pictures. Sir Tino Sidin taught me that. He always said that picture speaks of stories.

Later on I found a friend with a language I didn’t realize exist —signs. It hits me that all this time people understand each other because people speak fact and utter feelings through body language. This separate system makes a message whole and understandable. But the great thing about sign language is that facts and feelings are encoded into one system! No separation! Imagine the strength. That would probably by far measure elimate our difficulties of saying what we feel.

A Book to Sign and a Sign of Doubt
Not long after, I lost contact with my deaf friend and signing is the only thing I can do to respect her memories. I looked for a signing dictionary, but never found any. The best I could come up with is body language in flirting —that’s nowhere near my subject of interest. For weeks I stopped by any different bookstore, hoping to find one —just one, please.

Failed, I made a Plan B. I began to hunt and collect every movie I know related to sign language. I would watched the characters signing and tried to make out what it meant. I made a small list of vocabulary I’ve collected. I drew little pictures of fingers, hands, sometimes faces included. I made myself a dictionary of my own.

Around 1993, there was a TV series called Reasonable Doubt. It tells a story about a deaf public district attorney who has faith in the justice and its system (played by Marlee Matlin) and a lost-faith-in-justice detective who happens to know his way around signing, thus assigned to help her. The series was my heaven of learning. It was my dictionary. Every week I taped them, and play them through and through. I had to watch super closely to match the signs to the words. There was no (movie) editing software at the time and no way to slow the tapes down. The series made the largest vocabulary contribution to my dictionary. I still kept the book, possibly for some sentimental reasons.

When my dad took me to US for a week plus in 1997, I spent every day hunting sign language dictionary. It turned out that, there, it wasn’t a popular subject either. One bookstore to which I came to every day finally found one copy. The manager even gave me one for free, probably because he pitied me. That, or because I came and bought one book each day [1]. I was so surprised and excited that my respond was too embarassing to tell. I read it walking all the way my hotel [2]. Arrived at home, I cross-checked every vocabulary in my own dictionary and found most of them correct. I still remember the name of the author: Elaine Costello. It was primacy effect.

In 1998 Amazon succeeded as one of the most famous online bookstore. Hell, it made it as the most famous website! Its search engine found me more than sixty titles on ‘sign language’ subject. 60! Needing for my university final paper, I bought some. One of them is the delicious giant dictionary of American Sign Language. I even managed to have myself some books on psychology of deafness and the linguistic view of sign language! Internet is heaven. If you look closely, the sign is everywhere.

Noble Ibu Gia
It was hard to master a language when you don’t have a sparring partner. I was somewhat fluent giving signs, but my reading skill gave deaf community a bad name. Every several years I manage to find someone whom I poisoned into liking it. I would teach him/her the basic and started conversation in signs regularly. My first partner was Rid, from 1993. Rid helped me a lot with my first dictionary. When we graduated high school in 1994, Rid moved to Bandung. There were several partners after him, but not one of them lasted more than several weeks. I would then again be the lonely apprentice.

I never stopped learning signs. I love ‘communication’ (both oral and sign) even more and collected numerous journals on deaf culture, too. Through a very dear friend of mine, Tante Ann, I came across the noble Ibu Gia.

Tante Ann said that Ibu Gia had a deaf 10-year-old son, Christopher. Chris went to a mainstream school, not the school for “special kids.” That’s where he wanted to stay, and Ibu Gia fought the school for him to stay. Chris didn’t have any problem with school materials, but did have problems making friends. Not because he’s introvert, but because no one would understand what he tried to say —what he signed. This mother asked the school to provide a sign language class, and since no signing teacher was available, she volunteered.

Tante Ann talked to the headmaster and won the permission for me joining the class. I was afraid that Ibu Gia would feel reluctant about me, but on the contrary, she was excited about having me as her student. For three months, I studied sign with 15 kids from 5 to 12 years old. She conducted a fantastic class, and was a great teacher. She made friends with the kids and, most importantly, made Chris had many friends. There were games, quizzes, foods, laughs for each session. Every morning before class, she would brief me the day’s activity via phone. Sometimes when she’s stucked some place else, she would ask me to be in charge of the class. I knew then that the classroom scenes in Kindergarten Cop [3] wasn’t exaggerating.

Surprisingly, I made it through the class okay. The kids liked me and I liked them more. They love asking my age and I began to like my age. Some of the questions they posed were quite difficult to answer, like: why is your name adih?

A Sign of Dedication
When I was playing guest for Ti’s class, I thought a lot about Ibu Gia; The day we were introduced, the games we played in classroom, the cookies she baked us, the stories she told me about Chris, the feeling she had about being a mom of a deaf boy. I even recalled the sound of her high-pitched voice and how nice it sounded. I thought in Ti’s class, ‘This must have been what Ibu Gia felt.’ I was looking for a sparring partner so long, I actually found a teacher. I wish I hadn’t lost my cellphone so that I could still call her.

I need to say:
For the books you gave me, class you provided me, friends you introduced me: Thank You.

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[1] mostly Calvin and Hobbes, which is also rare back home.
[2] bad habit I still do until this day
[3] Kindergarten Cop tells a story of a kid-hater cop (Arnold Schwartzenegger) going undercover at a kindergarten where a possible kidnapping might happen.