First impressions

No matter how we may try, we judge a book by its cover and go by first impressions. It’s only natural.

On Tuesday, when Sue and I were dining out …… well, actually we were heading somewhere and stopped to eat at Pizza Hut’s lunchtime buffet as it was cheap. Sorry, affordable. I was finger spelling a couple of things Sue’d missed and noticed a chap watching rather interestedly. Fair enough, looks odd to the uninitiated.

We sat, ate, let belts out another hole and were recovering with cold drinks when Sue suddenly uttered “He’s got a really neat cochlea”. Quick as a flash I responded “What ???” Sue nodded behind me (where I don’t have eyes), the chap who’d watched us finger spelling stood outside and his implant (which was definitely neat and small) could be seen.

Nothing of interest there. But the waitress had greeted us by saying she remembered me from when I’d been in on my bike. I didn’t disappoint her, but we’d been in the car last time. She’d picked me out as a biker when I was in non-bike clothes and I don’t have any ink (scared of needles, me).

Bike riders always nodded to each other on the road, before biking became fashionable and attracted non-bike types – we still try though. And hearing impaired folks notice hearing aids, implants and attentive lip watching in others faster and more often than hearing folk do. I know it can never happen, for so many reasons. But I had a moment’s thought where hearing impaired people wore the ‘no-hear’ badge as an emblem of brother and sister hood. Majority of numbers is what matters to authority and if all hearing impaired people did ‘identify’ themselves,  authority and the general public might take more notice.

Too much revolutionary thought for one day. Take care out there.