johnny cade acted like he was deaf until he was 6.
he could hear perfectly fine— but he didn't want to talk to people because he was scared, he never wanted to actually use his voice. he knew a few words in asl just because he didn't want to speak— so he'd spell out "dairy" or sign "milk" when talking to darry.
he knew "thank you", "nice", "sorry", "family", "fun", "milk", "loud", and "stop".
this knowledge would carry on into his teenage years, when he would shut down verbally, he would just try and sign what he felt— but with limited knowledge, it was hard for him to do that.













