Communication; the universal solvent or a sticky subject?

I picked Chris and one of his mates up from school; they are going to the park. I’m driving. The plan is they’ll be staying at the park while I walk down with Jess (our dog) to pick up Alex.

Halfway down the hill Chris and his mate start jumping around in the car. They are both in the back, but keep reaching across tapping me and tapping on the dashboard. Needless to say I am very distracted and not happy about it and I say so.

However, this doesn’t stop them as they are frantically trying to bring my attention to the fact that the window part of the tailgate has popped open.

Fortunately we have all gone passed the point of getting upset when there are misunderstandings due to my deafness. So when I stop the car and get the two monkeys on the pavement for a verbal lesson in how to behave in a car, they just stand there waiting for me to finish blowing off steam before calmly pointing out the problem. I say ‘well done boys!’ (Still; don’t distract me when I’m driving.)

Understanding each other is not always easy, but we have developed a language, which is a combination of certain sounds I can recognize the lip shape of, finger spelling and hand signs plus facial expressions that deal with the most essential.

However some of it is best kept in the family as some of the shortcuts could be taken as rude to the casual observer. The name Andy for example is a hand and the finger spelling I. Which you may know is the middle finger. As Andy is a family friend and his name comes up quite often our shortcut is hand plus middle finger (without the correct pointing to the finger). Another friends name is Babs – I leave it to your knowledge of anatomy to how we sign that.)