In the absence of verbs...Communicating at Disneyland

"Savannah! Know what's even better than a single stroller?" I shouted back to my daughter as we fought our way through Frontiertown. "A DOUBLE stroller!" she shouted back, skipping deftly around a sudden left turn made by a fancy 18-wheeled canopied cup-holder bearing a pair of would-be pre-school pedestrians.  To be sure, I'm not passionately-opposed to the train-style tyke trolleys...it's the side-by-side wide-loads of which I am sorely tempted to up-end as I am forced into a maniacal shuffle-step when merging onto a Main Street that is mainly filled with...strollers. And let's get this straight. We ain't strolling. We're stalled.

"Look," I shouted again, pointing, "There's Dumbo!" "Only in Disney could you get away with that," Sydney said, giggling. But apparently you can't get away with everything at Disney. Just that morning, as we pulled up to the parking lot attendant, I rolled down my window to hand her the twenty dollar fee with a cheerful "Feliz Navidad!" I felt a slight shift in the car but ignored it because she smiled and handed me a fistful of candy canes. A small careful voice in the car offered advice in the soft, gentle tones that would accompany instructions for detonating a bomb. "There are some people who might be offended by that greeting," I was informed. Naturally, I exploded. Are you kidding me? Who? Who is offended? Satanists? I can see being offended by my accent but not by my intent. I was so confused. I had offered what I had thought was a culturally-embracing holiday greeting on the most perfect of days in the most perfect of places. It's the home of It's a Small World...not It's a Small-Minded World.

I admit to feeling stymied. Inhibited. Fearful to offend or embarrass. It was when I was in line for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride that I realized how crippling my fear of communicating could be. As the people path wound around and around, we kept passing a family chatting away in sign language. Well-versed in helpful nouns such as giraffe, justice, and rocket, I longed to greet them but bemoaned my lack of verbs. "I'd sound like a caveman grunting," I whispered to Sydney (My apologies for offending any blog readers who happen to be cavemen...). Every week, I introduce my 4th graders to new signs and encourage them to continue developing their sign language vocabularies but here I stood, in line for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, paralyzed with fear. Would I offend them by stumbling through my holiday greeting? What if they asked me a question that required a predicate? Could I slip the word giraffe into casual conversation? Why didn't I learn the sign for toad? Could I improvise by morphing the signs for bunny and turtle but then how do I generate a gender term for an animal? Man-bunny-turtle? It was almost time to get on the ride. It was now or never. Flushed, I tapped one of the men on the shoulder and signed Merry Christmas. He lit up and tapped his wife's shoulder so I could greet her too. Grinning, they signed thank you and very good. We waved and then I was stuffed into Mr. Toad's automobile for a quick get-away that required no verbs.

I offend a LOT of people. Rarely is that my goal. I am quick-to-speak rather than quick-to-think and my humor is often not as relate-able as I would hope. Cynicism and sarcasm are my primary languages. But I am also pretty fluent in the universal languages of love, friendship, and compassion. Or at least I have a working familiarity. Words are words. Open for interpretation and debate. But what is the intent with which they are voiced? Be careful, little ears, what you hear. Listen for the love. Listen for the sometimes frail, fearful attempt to make a connection. Ignore the poor grammar, the sometimes ignorant societal references, the morphing of unconventional nouns, the absence of verbs...listen with your heart instead of your political ideals, your causes, your pride. You wouldn't want anyone pointing you out in a crowd and yelling, "Look! There's Dumbo!"