Feelings and Are You Okay
sooo. last lesson for "signs for real life," and this one's the one that started the whole class for me, if i'm honest.
remember the sunrise story from way back at the beginning. kid who was hard of hearing, and the interpreter wasn't always around for the small stuff. the thing i needed most, more than "hello" or "my name is," was a way to walk up to a kid in a hallway and ask if they were okay. that's it. that's the sign i needed before any of the others.
so this lesson is that one, plus the rest of the feelings toolkit around it.
the core signs
okay — this one you basically know already from movies. thumb and index finger make an "o," other three fingers up, give it a little shake or a nod along with it. dead simple. this is your workhorse sign.
are you okay — same sign, but the question is in your face, not your hands. eyebrows up, head tilts forward a little, and you hold the sign a beat longer than normal, almost like you're asking it to answer back. we talked about this back in "asking questions with your eyebrows" — your face is doing the grammar work here, not extra hand movement.
sad — both hands, fingers spread a little, palms facing you, and you drag them down your face slowly. slowly is the whole sign. rush it and it looks like you're wiping something off your face, not feeling something.
happy — flat hand, brush up your chest a couple times, like happiness is bubbling up out of you. quick, light, a little bounce to it.
mad / angry — claw hand in front of your face, fingers bent, and pull it back toward you with some tension in it. this one actually wants a little heat behind it. go ahead and let your face be a little mad too.
tired — fingers touch your chest near the collarbone, both hands, then drop down like your energy's draining out. i do this one about 4pm most days without even thinking about it.
scared / afraid — both hands start closed near your chest and pop open fast, like you're flinching. the surprise is in the speed here, which is the one time i'll tell you fast is fine.
worried — flat hand, circles in front of your face. small circles, not big ones. big circles read as "confused," which is a different sign and a different feeling entirely.
practice at home
do this one in front of a mirror, not a screen. i mean that. sit with each sign for a minute and actually watch your own face do it. these signs are short — a couple seconds each — but the feeling has to be believable or the sign reads flat.
here's a drill i like: think of an actual day recently, and sign your way through it. woke up tired, had a good breakfast so happy, got stuck in traffic by the point of the mountain so mad, worried about something at work, ended up okay by dinner. five signs, one real story. way better practice than drilling them in a random list.
a caution here, gently
this is where i'll admit something. i tried to pick up a batch of these emotion signs off a fast tutorial video a while back, just cramming vocabulary before i had anyone to check my work. turns out i had "worried" a little wrong — my circle was too big and too high, up near my temple, which read more like "confused" or honestly kind of "crazy" to the deaf coworker who caught it later. she was nice about it. but it's exactly the gap i keep warning you about. apps and videos are fine for review once you've learned something right. they're a bad place to learn it cold, because nobody's there to catch the small stuff, and with emotion signs the small stuff is basically the whole sign.
so if you've got any deaf friends, coworkers, neighbors — anybody — this is a great set to run past them. "hey, did i get worried right?" takes ten seconds and saves you from doing it wrong for a year like i did.
the opinion part
i've said this before but it matters more here than anywhere else in the class: your face is grammar. with "hello" or "thank you," your face is nice to have. with feelings signs, your face basically is the sign. you can do a technically perfect "sad" with a totally blank face and it just won't land. it'll look like you're doing a spelling test, not telling someone something real.
i know performing an expression on cue feels a little fake, i still feel stiff doing it cold in front of people. but in a real moment, when somebody actually needs you to ask if they're okay, it comes out natural. that's the whole point of practicing it now, so it's ready when it's not a drill anymore.
before next time
next time we start putting a whole real conversation together, feelings and all, so spend a few minutes this week signing "are you okay" to somebody in your house and actually meaning it. see what they say back.
~terry