Words

I recently stumbled across an article (click here to see it) about a captioner who covered the horrors of 9-11. As I read it, I was reminded of just how necessary and vital a captioner’s role is in providing assistance to those with a hearing impairment. Can you imagine turning on the t.v. and watching those horrific events being played out, yet having no words to accompany it? Although to some it may only seem like little words running across the screen, to others it is those very words that help to keep them connected to the world that moves silently around them. Hellen Keller put it best… “I am just as deaf as I am blind. The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus-- the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir, and keeps us in the intellectual company of man. Blindness separates us from things, but deafness separates us from people.”
I say kudos to captioners everywhere. For with every little word you write you are helping bridge the gap that rests between the world of silence and that of sound, one that so many of us take for granted.

Double take

I made an impromptu trip to the store this afternoon after realizing I needed a few packaging supplies so I could mail a box to a friend. As I was checking out I did what all stores genuinely love to see their customers do, I made a last minute impulse purchase. Now I warn you, it was nothing terribly exciting or super extraordinary, just a pack of gum to toss into the bottom recesses of my handbag. However, when I went to grab my usual pack of Extra (the green kind), I did a quick double take and then paused for a brief moment, complete with gum in hand. Sitting directly beside the stack of Extra was a stack of Doublemint gum, each neatly packaged in their signature green cartons with little sprigs of mint printed on the front of the packages. As if to prove that advertising really does work, my mind instantly went back 20 years and began playing back the circa 1985 Doublemint gum commercial of my childhood. As the jingle was playing in my mind, I suddenly longed to smell the cool, minty scent that reminds me instantly of my grandparents. Suddenly, I was no longer standing in the checkout line at the store, but rather I was little girl in my grandparent’s kitchen in front of a tiny drawer chalked full of little packs of gum.
Ever since I can remember, my grandparents always had an endless supply of gum, always 5-stick packs and always Doublemint. Throughout my childhood, whenever I was at my grandparent's I would always raid their stash of gum from the drawer that somehow never seemed to go empty. It’s as if there was a magical, bottomless drawer full of Doublemint that could only be found at grandma and grandpa’s. I suddenly snapped out of my walk down memory lane, and immediately placed the pack of Extra back on the shelf. I decide, instead, to purchase a little piece of nostalgia. Even to this day, before I put a stick of that minty fresh gum into my mouth, I first take little whiff of that classic Doublemint scent, and think of them. I am reminded that scent is a powerful thing. For today, it brings back to me a little hint of my grandmother, who I miss dearly, and a memory from my childhood that will forever be nestled away in my mind.

Expect the Unexpected

Yesterday I was scheduled for more internship hours with a court reporter I frequently shadow. I thought it would be quick two hour depo with nothing particularly out of the ordinary. Perhaps that was my first mistake of the day. After all, even after the brief time I have spent interning, I’ve already discovered that you just really never know what you are going to walk into. I guess for a brief nanosecond (or maybe longer) that little tidbit of knowledge somehow escaped my head. So 7 1/2 hours later I realized two things: 1.) I wasn’t making my 2:30 appointment and 2.) Don’t forget to plug your computer in.