For one reason or another, I have decided it would be good to know. I'm starting with the finger-spelling alphabet. I don't know if I will ever learn more than that, but just to learn that much seems very useful. I should have it learned pretty well by the end of the evening. I'm using a quiz-practice program which I found on the Internet for free:
http://asl.ms/ So far I can recognize words up to 6 letters long on the "slow" setting, first time around about 50% of the time. If not, then it takes me 3-4 tries.