Wrist

My right hand is helping type this. 

My arm goes; normal normal normal normal warm warm normal normal.

I can almost pinch my swollen wrist with my good hand. The clamped fingers almost touch. Like one inch to go. The swollen wrist hand clamps the good wrist easily.

Two spots on the injured wrist are super sore. Front and back. No twisting allowed.

All my injuries are where two bones become five bones except for the femur and skull surgeries. And the two things on both pectorals. And the faceplant that led to Bell's palsy thing. I am a wreck at all these end-limb 2-bone to 5-bone connections. All of them were injured. Some repeatedly. Toes were broken.The left wrist was injured previously, the scar still there, along with this same right wrist. It's been insane. Compared, this injury is nothing.

I swear there are more than two bones in there, radius and ulna. It feels like a chicken leg with more thin bones in there, thin enough to use as a toothpick threading through in between the two main ones. I can't leave it alone. I keep examining the area and dehydrated the whole thing feels very weird. 

Want to hear something stupid? 

Okay, here goes.

A few days ago I wrote an email to my younger brother in which I attempt to annoy him a bit by repeating something in four languages including colloquial electrician-English and asking if he understands what I mean. I said, "here it is in sign language [                 ] Did you see that? I verbalized it. Did you hear that?

The answer must be no and no. 

I asked him if he knows how hard it is to speak sign language and English at the same time. And that it makes you look and sound a bit stupid in both languages. Again. You look stupid and you sound stupid in both languages.

Conversely, how hard it is to interpret anything word for word. It doesn't make sense until the end. Then the picture becomes clear. Then you find some way to say that in English.

Then a story. I apologized for the story, that he probably wouldn't care about, please don't bother wasting his time. He wrote back and told me he thought this is an interesting story, so here goes. Since my brother Jim thinks this interesting, maybe you will too. I don't know.

A very long time ago I had just met Jeff. Deaf Jeff. Turns out the most profoundly deaf person that I would ever know. His whole family, in fact. Half of them, actually. Both parents. Half his brothers and sisters. One of the strangest households that I have ever entered. 

His value to me then was him introducing me to his friends. He became a much better friend than just that.

Through Jeff my deaf associations among deaf people my age increased significantly. Knowing all these people increased my sign-skill immeasurably but that occurred over years and this is the beginning of all that.

We had been clubbing together. The club plays music so loud your whole body feels it. We encountered one of Jeff's hearing friends. We decided to stop at this hearing friend's house after the club closed. Along with other friends of Jeff's hearing friend. The group that assembled is half deaf and half hearing. Everyone very young. Very young. Like twenty-one and twenty-two. We had just turned of age to join the adult bars. We had already been assembling in the 3.2 bars, weird in this state, bars for ages between 17-21. 

What did we intend? More cocktails. More music. We intended to prolong the fun beyond closing hours. More raw energy than common sense. More eager to connect than for good sleep. At this time in their lives my new deaf friends were intensely interested in meeting hearing people and hooking up outside their small group. They were each lovely and vivacious, outgoing, personable, imaginative, artistic, energetic, enthusiastic. They were raised to be lovely. Literally schooled in being affable. They were very fun to be around. We always had a very good deal of fun together. 

Instantly the deaf took stock of the friend's apartment and realized the window between the kitchen to the breakfast nook was an imperfect stage. The deaf assembled in the tight kitchen while the hearing assembled in the living room with the nook separating them from the kitchen window performance stage. The deaf rooted around for kitchen implements to use imperfectly as stage props, adding to the amusement. 

They put on a spontaneous puppet show using kitchen implements as props. The story was prosaic as all hell but also amusing for its layered imperfections and its childlike absurd creativity. Everyone liked this arrangement. The deaf enjoyed doing the thing they were raised to do, be charming and lovely, while the hearing really enjoyed trying to figure out what in the heck they were doing. 

The deaf spoke. They needed to explain a few things. Here is where they shine. Getting through to hearing people. Still, at points they got stuck. I was the only hearing person who knew sign. I told the hearing people the signs that I recognized as I saw them. All very young, this impressed the crap out of all these new people. Like sports ref signs except a lot more of them. They were surprised that I could see so much. But the thing was, as I called out the signs someone else watching would discover an English version for all that much faster than I could. They kept blurting out what all that means and collectively they were much faster than me. Much faster. 

And that bummed me out because I was the only one who knew what they are actually saying but always the last one to know what all that means. The whole thing filled me with doubt about my own skill. And I was trying so hard. Was there something about my comprehension that will always put me at last place?

But then, they were guessing the whole time, and they were wrong a few times as things cleared. For me, that night was interesting for filling me with doubt in myself, for everyone else it was interesting for the interaction between worlds. 

Then, that night, a few nights ago, The night that I explained all this, I sprained my wrist making sign impossible. 

What a bummer!

I try to interpret things as they come up and switch to left-handed sign and the whole thing totally sucks. There is no way for me to make this look good. Extremely frustrating. And yet there are people out there signing with only one hand.  And two-handed signers who sign so lazily, so abbreviated, married couples for example, they might as well simply blink and think it. I'll know that I've healed when all this comes together.