There isn’t a way for you to understand this story if I don’t start by teaching you 2 signs.  It will be an interactive blog.  Yeeeesssss…….you are going to have to actually do this to understand.  It’s just a little hand movement, you’ll be fine.

You are going to learn the signs for Africa. First is the older sign.

Start with your fingers flattened against your thumb, as if you were going to hand me a piece of paper, or you are playing with a sock puppet.

Make your sock puppet face outward, away from you.  Now keep your hand in that position and pretend you are drawing the number 7 in the air.  GROOVY!!  You guys are doing well.  …….NOW…….this time as you make the #7, seperate your hand and then bring it back together – making the widest amount of seperation at the crook of the 7.  Close-open-close.  Close-open-close.  A couple more times……Good.  THAT is your first sign.

Now for the newer sign for Africa.  Make a fist with your thumb sticking out, exactly like you were going to suck your thumb.  Wait……I said LIKE you were going to suck your…..STOP SUCKING YOUR THUMB!!  Focus children!  For crying out loud.

Ok, now that you have your fist/thumb in front of your mouth, make the @ symbol as if you were drawing it on your face, making the A in the middle last.  Get the idea of that?

NOW….we can proceed.

So we’re in class the other day, interpreting a story from voice to sign.  Africa (obviously) came up.  Most of us used the older sign.  We stopped to discuss the 2 signs.  In the Deaf world, people are somewhat polarized between the 2.  They either hate one, or hate the other.

Sam (you’ve met Sam previously) verifies the accuracy of the reason for this disparity, as he has heard it.  He describes that his understanding for people not liking the #7 variety of Africa is because people were starting to use it for the “female shape”.

Now, when you say female shape, in conjunction with that sign, the first thing that pops into my head is mud flap ladies.  Ya with me?

So my INSTANT response is :

“Pssshhhhh – If you’re lucky!  I surely don’t have a shape like that!”

Now it would appear that everyone else in the room understood what SamSam meant by “female shape.”  He meant a specific female shape that is not boobies.

So the class spends about 3 seconds completely suspended in time – this often happens in magnificent times of complete shock, while brains process 1) if that really happened, and 2) how to react.

Christina made the unconscious decision to be the first to react.  She did this with the grace and dignity of hysterical and maniacal laughter.  Now Chris has quickly become one of my favorite peoples on the planet.  We have like 8 matrillion things in common, and we always have fun together.  So she can laugh at me, cause I love her.  I feared we may have needed to get her some oxygen before long, but then everone else started laughing as well.

I didn’t get it.  There had to be some explanation around it.  Ohhhhhh…….  So “If you’re lucky” suddenly sent them into thoughts of “She didn’t just meant that did she?” and “what could be wrong with her…….”

My repsponse?

“Well……you never know!!!  Maybe the bike accident was worse than I told you!  And now you’re laughing at me.”

I’m so persecuted.