“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.

这一章在讲一个有唐氏综合征的孩子，他妈妈在育儿方面非常积极，从小给他各种丰富的刺激，促进智力的发育，结果他就真的很聪明，七岁的时候会用 12 种语言数到 10，讲话没问题，在学校里也是模范学生。以上都是他付出了比常人多得多的努力的结果。然而渐渐地就发现他在理解人类社会方面问题很大，比如他会到处拥抱陌生人，会想开一家店专门告诉顾客某部电影的主旨。学校里的孩子们不喜欢他，工作之后因为独特的工作方式也很不招人待见。他比绝大多数唐氏综合征的人都聪明，但是对健全人类来说他又太笨了，所以就完全没有同类。
但看到书中的描写我没有觉得他很笨，他就是没有正常人那些条条框框，比如这一段：

Jason found his first job at Barnes & Noble, tearing the covers off magazines destined for recycling. He found it excruciatingly boring and kept making up ways to amuse himself. When his supervisor insisted that this was not his job, he replied, “I’m an independent adult person and I make my own decisions”—showing the very spirit that Charles and Emily had fostered, applied in exactly the wrong context. He was fired soon thereafter.

哇 “I’m an independent adult person and I make my own decisions” 这句话哪里说得不对吗？？
还有他妈妈纠结自己坚持把孩子教育成高功能有没有错的这一段：

A couple of years later, Jason was depressed again, and Emily reflected with concern on her original attempt to make Jason the highest-functioning DS kid in history. She said, “With perfect hindsight would I have done it differently? His intelligence has enriched our relationship so much and I would never want to give that up, but I’ll admit that lower-functioning Down kids are happier, less obsessed with how unfair it is. They have an easier time in many ways, but is that better? He takes such pleasure in words, in using his mind.” I went to a reading at Barnes & Noble that Jason and his friend did when their book was reissued. Jason answered the audience’s questions with fluency and poise. Emily was aglow and Jason was aglow, their pleasure in his intelligence a mutual delight.

总之感觉是一个很好的人，是社会不够接纳他。