When I was little my mom used to tell us a story about a mommy mouse and her babies who heard a cat approaching their home. The baby mice was cowering behind their mother, fearing the worst. There’s not a mouse family around that doesn’t have a relative whose life was cut short by an evil feline. The mama mouse whispered to her babies to stay behind her. Then she took a deep breath and with all her strength let out a huge bark,
“Woof woof! Bow wow!” she bellowed.
The cat hearing the sound of its arch rival, the dog, scampered away to safety.
Turning tp her babies the mama mouse said, “You see children, the value in knowing a second language?”
I was reminded of that story yesterday when in the supermarket. I was looking for mangoes but couldn’t find them. I approached a guy working sorting fruit and addressed him over the peaches and nectarines,
“Excuse me.”
No response. I know it’s sometimes hard to hear people through their masks so I tried again, louder this time:
“Excuse me, do you know where the mangoes are?”
Still no response, but in a matter of seconds he looked up and caught my eye. I asked him again if he knew where the mangoes were. He shook his head and gestured to his ears and I understood that he was Deaf.
I’ve taken a few sign language courses but not much of it stuck, unfortunately. What did stick was how to form my fingers into letters. I had learned that as a little girl when I read a biography of Helen Keller. So I carefully spelled out M A N G O, he showed me where they were and we both smiled.
