“Though we used different signed languages, these Chinese Deaf people and I could make ourselves understood; and though we came from different countries, our mutual Deaf culture held us together. By the end of the evening we’d talked about Deaf life in China, and about Chinese politics.” I nodded. “You couldn’t do that in China,” he said. “No hearing person could. So who’s disabled then?”

#FarFromTheTree #读书

English is a sequential language, with words produced in defined order; the listener’s short-term memory holds the words of a sentence, then takes meaning from their relationship. ASL (American Sign Language) is a simultaneous language in which individual signs are amalgamated into composite ones; one complex, fluid movement could mean, for example, “He moved from the East Coast to the West Coast.” Each sign includes a hand shape, a location on or near the body where the shape is held, and a directional movement. Additionally, facial expressions serve not just to communicate emotions, but as structural components of individual signs. This compounding works well for short-term visual memory, which can hold fewer discrete images than auditory memory. If one needed to make first the sign for “he,” then “moved,” then “from,” and so on, the mechanical effort would become tedious and the logic would disappear; the same unintelligible jumble would result if one needed to speak several different words simultaneously.

simultaneous language 我立刻想到七肢桶​​
之前知道有 Pidgin Language，但是没想到竟然还有 Pidgin Signed English​​

Betty Adelson, recently asked by journalist Lynn Harris what people of short stature prefer to be called, said, “Most individuals prefer simply to be called by their given names.”

As a child, Jake would sometimes weep, saying, “I don’t want to be little.” Leslie wanted to cry, too. “What would be wrong about letting him know that you hurt for him, too?” she said. “You don’t want your child to perceive that you think his situation is hopeless, but also you don’t want to deny his experience. A few times, I’ve said, ‘Have you talked to your daddy about this?’ ‘No, I’m crying ’cause I don’t want to be like me, which means I don’t want to be like him. That would hurt his feelings.’”

父亲是侏儒，小孩也是也是侏儒，小孩不希望自己是侏儒，很难过，但是他没有跟爸爸讲，因为不想当一个侏儒就意味着他不想跟爸爸一样，这样会让爸爸伤心，好善解人意的小孩子​​

LPA (Little People of America) and similar organizations can be a blessing, though they can, equally, be a trial; Ablon points out that attending LPA can traumatize people who have blamed all their problems on their dwarfism, and who must now come to terms with personal flaws.

On the LPA website, one woman complained about the difficulty of not being able to kiss an AP or look into his eyes while they were having sex. Harry Wieder said, “For people of equal height, what is mysterious is the lower body, which you have to reach for—that’s what’s sexualized. For me, it’s the opposite. I look at people below the waist all day every day, and my idea of intimacy is the special occasion of looking someone in the face. The feeling when having sex with APs (average people) that I needed to relate to the bottom half of the body, and not relate so much to the top half, was problematic.”

“Raising a kid like Jason,” she said, “the kid is the least of the challenges. Jason was there to put his arms around me when the bureaucracies had nearly killed me.” Services are seldom available to anyone who does not have the wherewithal to battle agencies. Doing so often requires education, time, and money—which is a painful irony given that these services are intended to benefit people who may be short on all three.