Once upon a time, three brothers were playing in a sand-box in their parents' backyard. Their names are Bill, Jake, and Pick. Jake said to Bill, "Pick is such a stupid name, haha. It's not even a name, actually." Bill laughed hysterically at Jake's comment. Not only did his brother, Pick, have a strange name, but he was deaf, and unable to hear any of their taunting. It often frustrated Bill and Jake that they were unable to be heard by their deaf brother, Pick. Bill picked up a handful of sand and threw it violently into Pick's face to make a point. Pick, the youngest of the three, although very quick at reacting to external stimuli (excluding sound), had no time to shield his eyes, and the small rocks quickly made permanent scratches on his cornea, causing his eyes to water up uncontrollably to the point where he could not see.
It is important for the reader to now understand how Pick came about his strange name. From an early age, the boy would explore with his hands a lot. Being deaf, his other senses were heightened, especially touch. He picked his nose a lot. He picked his butt a lot. His birth name was Robert, but his brothers soon nicknamed him Pick, and it caught on.
"Why can't Pick learn people talk," asked Bill, to his mother, during one of their dreaded sign language lessons. Bill and Jake's parents struggled. Their names were Bill and Lisa. Bill worked late in a Museum of Natural History, giving tours to unimpressed guests while trying to balance paying off his college student loans, the mortgage on his house, and food expenses for his family. Lisa spent her time chasing thrills. She compulsively locked herself in her room, watched pornography and chatted to men online from other countries. Bill was, to put it bluntly, a pushover, and that drove Lisa crazy. She gave him three kids, and yet, he had still never been in a fight, not that the need to defend her family physically had arisen yet, but she thought about it often, and she didn't think Bill would react well. She knew how hard of a situation he was in, and had it been her, she would have given up a long time ago. She often thought about cheating on him to get her rocks off, but she never did. The thought of other men was the fuel which fed the birthday-candle-sized fire of their relationship.
"Pick has broken ears, sweetie," Lisa replied, "They don't work at all!"
Bill briefly smiled to himself, momentarily amused at hearing his wife use the words, "They don't work at all," which described her perfectly. Before he smiled long enough to be noticed, the thought of the tragedy of his youngest son's hearing crept back into his mind. They were told by doctors that everyone in the family ought to learn sign language in order to communicate with Pick. Pick learned it fast, and in fact, he could sign before most young children could talk. Unfortunately, nobody in his family took the time to learn the language except his mother, and she mistakenly learned Chinese sign language instead of American, so she only understood her son on some occasions. Pick's dad was too busy to find the time to learn it, but he made use of a whiteboard he found in the attic. Aside from learning sign language quickly, Pick had learned to read and write quickly. He was a gifted artist. Sometimes he would draw unflattering pictures of his brothers, or his mother, on the whiteboard, and flash them at his father privately, before erasing them. By the age of five, Pick could read lips, and he had a lot of practice. His family was extraordinarily vocal, and he saw a special needs teacher at his school who gave him the tools to learn as a deaf person in the modern world. He didn't let anybody know that he could read lips; nobody but his teacher suspected how much he understood, but if Pick could see a person's face and body language, he knew what they were saying more than a person who had working ears did.
Back to the present, now. Bill had no sooner thrown the sand into his brother's eyes than he had swallowed the consequences of what might happen. Pick tried to wipe his eyes with his sleeve, and he blinked, but the sand was already inside his eyelid. Jake looked at Pick and then back to his brother, Bill. To both of their horrors, Pick started to expel vocalized sounds of pain, which sounded like a dying animal. Pick tried to stand up and run inside to his mother, but he couldn't see. James screamed from the backyard "Mom! Mom! Mom!" Being deaf, Pick was unable to hear his brother's cry for help, so he continued to crawl in the direction which he thought led to the house as he made what he thought were loud noises with his mouth.
