Yesterday, my son taught me the sign for lockdown—different than locking a door,or the shutdown we invented at the startof the pandemic. Little fistfuls of locksswept quickly between us, a signdesigned especially for school.My son spent his first years a different kind oflocked up—an orphanage in Bangkok, where he didn’tspeak and they couldn’t sign. He came home, age four,silent. We thought being here could opendoors. It has, of course. He’s learned so muchat the deaf school; the speech therapist calls it a LanguageExplosion. I keep lists of the words he’s gathered:vanilla, buckle, castle, stay. Andlockdown. He absorbs it like the rest. Now the schoolshe builds with Magna-Tiles have lockdowns. I worryin trying to give him keys, we’ve only changed the locks.To lock down a deaf school, we use a special strobe.When it flashes, we flip switches and sign throughdarkness. The children know to staybeneath the windows. Every five minutes a robot texts:“Shelter in place is still in effect. Please await furtherinstructions.” Then we pull the fire alarm, a tactical move tounsettle the shooter. Hearing people can’tthink with noise like that. A piercing thingwe don’t detect, to cover the sounds we make, the soundswe don’t know we’re making.