Without further ado

This is frustrating. I am mute. I am not usually mute. However, I am occasionally afflicted with a vanishing of my voice. Not your common or garden croakiness, more like a vocal chord extraction – you cannot tell I am trying to say anything unless you look at me. And even then, I’m likely to have to repeat my silent utterings. The average person’s lip reading skills span to telling when a footballer has forgotten the cameras are live as they spew vitriol at whoever has upset them.

When lip reading fails, I am left with the time consuming method of writing everything down. This strangely has sometimes been met with a similarly written reply – I can still hear, much as just because I am inaudible it doesn’t mean you have to whisper to me! My other option is I can become a mime artist. Which, unless you have actually taken the time to learn the proper, recognised sign language and are trying to commune with a similarly learned person, is kind of like inventing your own language and expecting everyone to decipher the crude cryptography created on the spot to convey our wants and needs. This is extremely frustrating, as not everyone thinks the same.  Ergo, leaving you very open to misinterpretation. This is very frustrating.