International Sign Language - A True Story

About two years ago my wife and I were living in a very nice apartment block in Cambridge, Massachusetts (and paying a handsome price for the privilege). During the summer, twice a week, a grounds keeping company would come along, early in the morning and dig the borders, cut the grass, prune the plants, etc. It was all very nice and I didn’t have any problem with this as it was all included in the price of the apartment.

Later on in the summer, while it was still very hot, as the leaves started to fall from the trees, the groundskeepers would employ the use of a petrol-driven leaf blower to rid the car park, at the back of the block, of a ton of leaves.

Now, our bedroom window overlooked the car park and it was on the first floor, so the noise and smell from the leaf blower engine was quite painful, but it was easy to make sure that I was in another room for the duration, but the time at which the company did the ground maintenance got earlier and earlier, sometimes before 8am, whilst I was still asleep, in bed, with the windows wide open, and quite contrary to the terms of our quiet enjoyment of our apartment, as written into our contract. I wrote to and phoned the management company a few times, but they did nothing about making sure they did it later in the day.

So, one morning I got fed up – really fed up and decided to do something about it myself. I went outside and found the guy with the leaf blower. He was a small Mexican guy, still beavering away, and making myself heard was the first problem. I asked him to turn off the leaf blower so that I could talk to him, but at first he could hear, then it became apparent that he didn’t speak English. Actually I hadn’t though about it, but very few of the guys in that company can speak English. So I resorted to what everyone would do in that situation - international sign language. Firstly, I asked him quietly to be quiet, a request accompanied with a straightened forefinger to the mouth, in a shhsshing way. Then I asked him to turn off the leaf blower, and accompanied this request with a finger drawn across the throat – the motion for silence. Well the guy went white, turned on his heels and ran away, the leaf blower still spewing both noise and stink.

I didn’t understand, but when I heard the leaf blower being turned off a few minutes later, I was ecstatic with my success. I went round to the front of the apartment, where the other guys had stopped working and was met by another Mexican guy whom I assumed was his manager. He was going apeshit in Spanish and I didn’t understand what he was saying, but since I had succeeded in getting the leaf blower turned off through a nice chat, I considered it “job done”, and a little confused I retired back to the apartment.

It wasn’t until I talked to my wife about my confusion regarding their reactions that it became clear what had happened. In thinking that I had said, in my motioned sign language, “please be quiet and turn off the machine”, I had actually communicated, “stay quiet, I am going to kill you”. It was very early in the morning and I had drawn my finger across my throat instead of using a whole-handed, “cut-it” type motion.

No wonder he ran away.