do you know what a wimple is?

Back for day four.  This one will be short and sweet.  To make a few extra dollars while working summers at the camp I took on the role of bus driver prior to the start of the day.  Well not exactly a "bus" driver since that is reserved for the pros.  I drove a station wagon and was responsible for picking up three children.  The first stop was a very young girl, one of the youngest campers.  In this story I will call refer to her as Kiara.  The second stop was a twelve year old boy.  He was partially deaf and was fluent in American Sign Language and knew a bit of Spanish.  The final stop was Steven, he was deaf.  I thought this was a great chance for me to learn a few basic signs and few basic Spanish words from Kiara who was  young and bi-lingual although she tended to get Spanish and English confused.  She was difficult to understand at times.


  And then...... Prior to my morning route I discovered the windshield wipers did not work.  I went on my morning route and picked up Kiara.  I looked in the rear view mirror and saw this very cute, pig tailed young girl and yet it was very challenging for me to hold a conversation.  Stop number two was not coming to camp.  No big deal except this boy was my main form of communication with the other two children.  Riding in silence is not really my style so it was a concern.  By stop number three the rain was coming down and I noticed Kiara was slightly nervous back there, alone in her giant station wagon seat.  Steven gets in and we are on our way and now it is raining even harder.  It was clearly bothering Kiara.  She kept telling me "put on the wimples!"  I was confused and looked to Steven for some help but he was even more confused than me.  I was looking to a hearing impaired seven year old to help me decipher what the six year old Spanish speaking girl was trying to tell me. She continued to say, with conviction "put on the wimples".  What the hell is a wimple in any language was my thought.  And then one hand motion from Kiara clued Steven in and he  made the motions of windshield wipers.  Wimples = Windshield Wipers.  I did not even bother trying to explain why they were not on from the start.  All I could come up with was a shoulder shrug and "broken".  I hoped that would suffice.  


 I felt like I was the start of a good joke.  There was a suburban white boy, a Spanish speaking girl and a deaf boy in a station wagon....."


To this day I ask my wife to turn on the wimples when it is raining.  And all of my stories are true first hand experiences.