A month ago, Kristen texted me requesting my improv acting skills—a skill I did not know I had. This was to take place at Vancouver Community College, and I’d been looking for an excuse to visit the mainland. I didn’t realize that the date was right before the long weekend when everybody’s hyped about crossing the Strait of Georgia to get to the island or vice versa. Good Friday enthusiasts are no good.
Alright, I’ll leave before the long weekend ferry rush. Still, travelling to the ferry terminal right after work didn’t float my boat, and it’d been a while since I’d taken the seaplane. That was the plan until a co-worker pointed out Helijet was having a sale: $137. I’d never been in a helicopter!
I’ve never been in a helicopter.
I HAVE BEEN IN A HELICOPTER.
I rode the helicopter with my ears unplugged, as did the guy seated next to me, which I found weird. Maybe he was deaf too? When he unfastened his seat belt, the buckle whacked my sunglasses. I responded to his apology with a grimace. I mean, everything about the helicopter ride was amazing up until that point.
It was sunny when I departed the island. Heavy clouds hung over downtown Vancouver:
It started raining as I waited at the bus stop. I looked around in awe of the crowd. How do all these people afford to live in Vancouver? Then, as I rode the #7 bus, which goes through East Vancouver, it became apparent how many people, in fact, cannot afford to live in Vancouver
Zoée and Greta hosted me for the two nights I was in Vancouver. I found one of the staples of my parents’ bookshelves on Zoèe’s coffee table: The Comprehensive Signed English Dictionary.
For those unfamiliar with signed languages, Signed Exact English (SEE) is just that: it is English in sign language. Like many deaf kids in the 1980s, I learned SEE before picking up ASL via immersion, mainly in high school. Zoée’s sign language journey was more or less the same.
How many SEE signs did we remember? We quizzed each other.
We both recognized the SEE version of ‘penis’. The person in these illustrations signs everything with a blank expression: the antithesis of ASL. Even Zoée’s mushroom doll is more expressive… (and phallic).
Neither of us remember ever signing ‘serious’ like this:
Nor did we know there was a sign for ‘peppermint’. We’ve always fingerspelled the word. Unfortunately, we’ve inadvertently committed this sign to memory, so it’s gonna be how we sign ‘peppermint’ from now on:
It wasn’t like our SEE refresher would come in handy the next day. Zoée and I got to Vancouver Community College at 8:30 a.m. All the participants received a binder with several situations. We were to improvise a conversation with a hearing ‘actor’ for ten minutes per situation. The victims were first-year ASL interpretation students. But because they were mere neophytes, they weren’t required to interpret simultaneously. Instead, they were given time to process each side of the conversation.
Unlike me, Zoée wasn’t there as an actor but as a monitor. Kristen, the friend who ‘hired’ me, was also one of the monitors. There was no pressure for me to do well: even if I were to flub some signs–and I did–I was creating a realistic simulation for these student interpreters. The creative juices were flowing smoothly for the first half of the day. By the afternoon, after going through five or six scenarios, I started struggling with the fake dialogue. One of the scenarios had me convince my “sister” to surprise our newly retired parents with a trip to Paris (I could have chosen Kukamunga, but I was just that drained of any creativity). After the ten minutes were up, my scenario partner remarked how it was weird that she was supposedly my sister, yet she didn’t know how to sign.
Although my actual sister can sign (not fluidly–but we can communicate in sign language), this is sadly not uncommon.
I didn’t try to throw any of the student interpreters off with the SEE sign for ‘serious’, ‘penis’, or even ‘peppermint’. Zoée pointed out that I used the less-common sign for ‘guarantee’. I also used the sign for ‘check’ (as in, “check this out”) instead of the sign for ‘cheque’.
Boy, is my face red!
Along with the sign for ‘peppermint’, I learned the signs: WhatsApp (draw double checkmarks in the air with the V handshape), dodgeball (using the thumbs-up handshape, hit sides of hips with thumbs pointing outwards) and El Paso (L handshape with one hand and O handshape with the other– L pass O–so clever!).
I got paid, I learned lots, and I spent the WHOLE DAY signing, which is a rarity! I’d have made more money at my real job, but this was a nice change of scenery.
That evening, Kristen, Zoée, and four others gathered at a pub on Commercial Drive. I took a poorly framed stealth group shot:
I wrapped up my stay on the mainland with a visit to Opa’s place in the deepest, darkest Surrey. At 97, he tires of communicating in writing quickly, so I got him to try my phone’s speech-to-text feature. According to Opa and those who have heard him speak, he has a strong Rotterdam accent. He also remarked how his voice has become raspy, and even speaking wears him out. Still, he was blown away by how well the Live Transcribe app understood him.
I also showed him how I could take a picture of my handwriting and have my phone convert it into text. I was blown away by how well my phone deciphered my gross handwriting. Wild advancements have been made to smartphones in the last five years. Yet, I had to take three buses and the Skytrain to travel 30km from Surrey to Tsawwassen. It took two hours. Madness.
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