Silence in Court

I hold up both hands in a visible 'STOP' sign, which means ‘pray silence as the middle sized chappie is about to make an announcement.' Now that he is beginning to speak, becoming less 'non-verbal' he needs a break. [translation = chance to be heard] It’s hard to keep the other two small people silent for an indefinite period of time, whilst the middle sized one literally, gathers his thoughts in preparation for speech.

I need to get a handle on this now, whilst he’s still only six and a half in the hope that in the future when he becomes a morose teenager, I will still be able to extract information from him.

Junior sons jumps and jiggles in his chair on his hunkers, like a horse in a stall before the race. Junior daughter slumps back in her chair eyes on the ceiling, tedious, bored.

Senior son starts; “well…..do you know what?” Great start, very casual, very contemporary, not too strained, carry on. His eyes rest fleetingly on each of us, he isn’t just addressing me, he is addressing a whole audience, nearly all of his family, he is being inclusive.

“Genie has two children,” he announces with hardly a stammer, the correct tense and a countenance that isn’t distorted. He is initiating conversation, imparting a piece of information to me that is of a social nature, nothing to do with Pokemon, school or someone else’s exciting misbehaviour. There is no perceptible gain to him in telling me this, it is ‘merely’ social exchange.

His enunciation is poor which means that you can’t be sure if he said ‘Gene’ or ‘Genie.’ I decide to be difficult, even though I know exactly who he means. [translation = push the enveloppe]

“Is that Genie from therapy or Gene from over the road?” I pause, count to twenty, maintain eye contact and wait. The other two are bubbling with irritation but I manage a palm up hand in front of each of them.

“Well,’ he begins tentatively and uses a ‘filler phrase’ whilst his brain does catch up “I think maybe………it is Genie.” [translation = many people use 'fillers,' Americans often say 'you know,' British people often say 'actually.']

More interestingly, I know the motivational source. [translation = to what he is referring, the incident that he wants to share] Yesterday, during therapy, he was motivated to check the current marital status of his therapists, whether they were still married, perhaps a divorce might be pending, whether they had managed to off load their current burden of offspring. [Translation = perfectly natural for a young man with social aspirations.