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I have a couple questions from communication issues that came up recently with my deaf friend. I think partly my sense of humour just does not translate well, but anyway.
In the sign club we're doing, my darling son is the class clown. Actually, he's the class clown everywhere, but my friend has only seen him at class. The rest of the class is always laughing at him, and I am always signing to him "Pay attention," and "Behave!". I tried to tell her once that he was the class clown. Now she keeps asking me where he goes to school to learn to be a clown and I don't think she's being funny. Is there some other way to communicate that my 13 year old son just turns everything into a joke and loves to make people laugh? Or maybe she is being funny and I don't get it.
This last Sunday, we were signing, and there was quite a bit of distance between us so it wasn't obvious that we were talking to each other. A friend (and a member of our little sign lnaguage club) stepped between us, completely blocking our view. I was teasing him, and I waved him away and pretended to rebuke him. My friend laughed at that and teased me that I wasn't nice to him at all.
I said I was old, so I was just acting like his mother. That didn't communicate well at all. She wanted to know where his mother is, what does his mother act like, where did she live- and she just seemed to fixate on his mom, and kept asking me what I meant. In the end, I just said I was trying to joke, but I guess it wasn't very funny, but she still seemed confused.
Any ideas? Ideas other than that I should not ever try to be funny in sign language again, because I've already figured that part out.
"Clown" is a very distinctive concept. "Class clown" is an idiom. what does it mean to be a class clown? it means to fool around making jokes not paying attention.
sign it something like this perhaps:
Son, my, he, play, silly, all day, pay attention, not, (frown). Think, me, he, become clown, goto, clown, college, maybe (laugh).
Does this help?