Fic: Past Tense

[katzedecimal]

Sick-Katze is sick, feels ick, brings fic.

Title: Past Tense
Author: Katzedecimal
Rating: T
Characters: Giovanni Ricardo, Chase Williams, brief appearances by Kid Flash, Aqualad
Summary: What makes people tick

Comments

[ziarenete13x]

Oh god, I do that too! I'm American though. I work in a fabric shop, which means [in America] I get a.) all the bored housewives and crafters, b.) the poor and lower-to-mid middle-class folks [like myself] trying to make their stuff last longer, c.) the budding home-decorators looking for a [much!] less costly alternative, d.) lots and lots of foreigners, whether visiting or naturalized. Many of all four groups have some sort of accent, whether its a heavy Brooklyn one, a Southern drawl, Trenton ebonics, British, Polish, Spanish, Indian...And I have a horrible habit of picking up the speech patterns of anyone I talk to for more than a few minutes, which I usually have to do to explain such-and-such a fabric and this-and-that technique. I get so many dirty looks.

What's worse is I copy body language sometimes. I had a customer with palsy when I worked in the pharmacy in New Hope (which is a pretty gay community, so yeah) and I'd shake for hours after he left, and there's a few deaf people who come in to the fabric store...I mistakenly signed 'thank you' with three fingers once...I hope against hope that that doesn't mean anything rude.

[katzedecimal]

Oh boy, back when I was working as a resident manager in apartment buildings, we had some deaf tenants in one. They were lovely people. I know very little ASL ('how are you' was about it) and my fingerspelling is gross and slow, lacking in dexterity, but I did my best. They always wanted to deal with me over the other managers (three of us) because the others slurred their words or didn't look at them when talking, so they were hard to communicate with (hard to read someone's lips when they won't look at you :-P ) They were more than happy to expand my signed vocabulary, and by the time they gave their notice to vacate, we were conducting business mostly in ASL with a few written notes. Alas, I've since forgotten most of the vocabulary XD