In So Many Words

Interviewing a developmentally disabled person for the first time requires acute listening skills even for a social worker. Communication deficits are common. The listener must be attentive to mispronounced words, words used out of context, and speech impediments.

The swivel chair I lowered just for Trudy Landmanark’s feet to touch the ground dwarfed her sub five-foot frame. Her pig-tails jostled as she squirmed to find a comfortable seated position.

I asked, “What language do you speak?”

Trudy answered me in English. “What do you think?”

“Obviously you understand the spoken word." My ball point pen lowered. "I am going to check off English as the primary language for the record.”

Trudy’s little voice squeaked from her pint-size frame when she announced. “Oh, since we are on the subject…I speak French too.”

“I read your file. I did not know that about you.” I replied. “Let me hear you speak some French.”

“Oui oui.” she piped with an award-winning smile. Her stocking covered legs danced below the base of the chair.

“Excellent foreign language skills.” I praised. “Humm….What else can you say in French?”

“That is all I can say in French but I use it when I have to go to the bathroom too.”

I looked at her stepfather for clarification. He gave me a poker face. I decided to call Trudy’s bluff on my own recognizance. “Trudy, you speak French in the bathroom?”

“I say oui oui when I have to go to the bathroom. Don’t you say oui oui when you have to go pee-pee?”

My face reddened because she trumped The King of Puns. I mused, “In so many words.”