Codenames

 A funny thing about this pandemic - when it comes to date night, I usually feel like inviting friends to play games by zoom, but Marriner usually feels like bumming around together and being off the computer for a bit. We found this out a few weeks ago, after several weeks of me planning game nights and Marriner planning movie nights or walks. I guess Marriner gets more social interaction during the day - and definitely more zoom time! So now that we've figured this out, of course, I've been planning very nice, computer-less dates, and this week, Marriner planned a social activity! Ha! He set up a game night with friends from the Branch. This, of course, requires some creative thinking, because not only do you have to be able to play remotely, but you have to be able to still see each other to communicate while you're playing. Marriner decided to try Codenames, which is one of our favorite games. And some friends had recently shown us how to play it online. Woohoo!

Codenames originally had a grid with different words on it. One person on each team takes turns giving their teammates a 1-word clue to guess which words are their team's. Later, a picture version was invented, and that's the version someone gave us years ago. Marriner decided that pictures would match the ASL style well, so so much for the online version, and he set up a camera to show the tiles on zoom. 

Well, it turns out that it didn't really take on an ASL flavor. We said your clue could be one word OR one sign. But every time someone used a sign, they had to spell which word for that sign they meant, because the sign was so ambiguous. For example, one person signed "statue" and the rest of us thought he meant "shape." They're the same sign, you figure out the difference by context. I thought about this contextual nature of ASL while we were playing. I wonder if a group of all-ASL people would play different than we did? For us, there were many English-speakers, and the deaf people were strong English users, so the ASL didn't match the specific thing we were trying to say. But I wondered if another group, say, of people who grew up just using ASL, would really jive with the visualness of the game and be really amazing at it? But as I thought about it, I decided that the contextuality of ASL would kill that - because there are such huge differences in meaning based on the context. Which, of course, there is none in a 1-word clue!

So, we played a very English-y game of Codenames in ASL, and had a blast. We played girls against boys, and it was very evenly matched. At the very end, after 4 games, it all came down to the last tile, where the girls guessed the assassin instead of the secret agent, and the boys won. It used every bit of technology all of us had - zoom on the computer, the game board on another device. But it worked!

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Saturday, Ellis and I took the kids of my ministering sister to the park, just to do something nice for her. The idea was to give her time to get some work done, but we stayed and chatted for like 45 minutes before we left, so I don't know if we came out net-zero or not. :) While we were chatting, I just felt a big emotion bubbling up that I can best describe as...I dunno, gushiness? I just wanted to blurt out to this family, whose oldest is in Kindergarten, that they're just amazing, and they're doing awesome, and I'm so happy and proud to be their friends. And I totally had this flash back to when we had young kids, and how baffled I was by people saying things like that to us. But it's for real! (Though seriously, it made me feel old...) Maybe once you've been through the fire of young parenthood, you're pretty sure it's so hard, nobody else in the world will want to do it. So when you see someone trying, you're just so happy that the future is going to happen, after all? Or maybe you're really gushing to yourself, as you see yourself in them, telling yourself to keep going, you're going to make it after all. 

This happened again this week, as I watched Marriner's counselor and his wife passing off their baby as he conducted the meeting and she led the music. These young families, they're doing amazing things. And they're doing it in two languages, and navigating all the extra obstacles that deafness brings. And I just have this urge to gush, and tell them I just think they're amazing. Which, really, means I'm getting old. I'm ok with that.

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A few months ago, we required all family prayers to be in ASL, because the younger kids would never sign. They'd just sorta stare at their plate during dinner, hoping the conversation would happen over their heads. This worked very well at getting people to sign, but the next step was getting the little kids to pay attention to what people were signing. So one day, I asked the kids if anyone could tell me something someone said in the prayer. Of course, they couldn't, but the next prayer, they could...

It worked very well for a while, then Martha got tired of it and zoned off. Sam is still doing ok at paying attention, depending on the day. But Jane LOVES this game. Generally, about the time someone starts signing, "In the name of..." Jane signs "AMEN!" (or not...) and then shouts, "I can tell you what was in the prayer!" So then we tell Jane she has to wait until the WHOLE prayer is over, make the praying person do the end of the prayer again, in which Jane waits about 3 seconds longer, then yells even louder, "I CAN TELL YOU WHAT WAS IN THE PRAYER!" Ok, Jane, what was it... Sometimes, she says something simple like, "I saw missionary!" But sometimes, she actually understands waaayyyy more than we thought she could. It's fun seeing her, with her little kid inherent language learning capabilities.

Actually, she did this on Sunday - they were announcing a branch activity with popcorn on Saturday, and Jane shouted out, "I saw popcorn!" Ha ha!! I'm glad she was paying attention...and I'm sure everyone else who heard her was, too :)