It is funny the things that go on around us that we just seem to know about. We don't remember anyone telling us about them, we just seem to have always known.
The other day as Chance and I were coming off the freeway ramp to come home, Chance asked me what the yucky smell was. I told him that it was cow manure. Chance said "What?" So I told him again. Chance still did not understand but was determined to know what was assaulting his nose in such a way. So I tried to use a word I knew he would understand. I told him it was cow poo. Again, Chance said "What?" "It is cow poo", I replied. Chance logically wanted to know where the cows were. I told him there were no cows, just cow poo. So Chance asked me where the cow cages were. I told him there were no cow cages, that the cows did not actually live in the fields, but that the cow poo was brought to the fields. By now, Chance was highly frustrated so when we turned onto a new road, I pulled off to the side so that I could face him. In a very animated way, Chance said "Where is the cow cage?!!!!!" He signed the words cow and cage which is Chance's desperate way of emphasizing what he is saying when he is frustrated and does not think we are understanding him. So I explained that there were no cows or cow cages because the cows lived somewhere else and then people just brought the poo to the field to help the plants grow. I had to say that twice. Then Chance, who has a very expressive face, just sat and stared at me expressionless. It was if he was saying, "Are you on drugs? What is wrong with you? Why would you make up a story like that?" Chance just sat there staring at me like I had lost it for a while and then he said "WHY?!"
So Chance has just learned one of those things in life that we all know, except Chance might remember the exact moment that he found out that cow poo is used to help things grow.
Chance is also learning idioms at school, which is excellent. These phrases are also things that we all know what they mean, but we don't know why we know what they mean. While driving home the other night, Chance says to me "What does ‘hold your horses’ mean?" At first I thought that he was asking me because he had heard that phrase somewhere and wanted to know what it meant. But then he answered it by himself. He said "’Hold your horses’ means ‘wait.’" Then he asked me, "What does ‘piece of cake’ mean?" Then he told me that ‘piece of cake’ means ‘easy’. I am very grateful to his teacher for teaching him these phrases as honestly, it had not occurred to me. Yet these are phrases that Chance is going to hear all of his life and people will just assume that he knows what they mean. Can you imagine being a teen-age and not knowing what ‘hold your horses’ means? You would be so confused. Deaf kids do not just pick up on the things that hearing children do. They have to work harder at it. Sometimes when we are asking Chance what something means, we have to tell his brother and sister to stay quiet and let Chance answer. His siblings just know what certain things mean, while Chance has to think about it and sometimes he just does not know. Chance is amazing in his ability and desire to figure things out.
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