Voice of the Voiceless

I meant to get this posted about two weeks ago. Oops.

Back when I was self-medicating for a sore throat, I did something pretty stupid. I overused my voice. Not just talked a bit too much. There was a pretty good worship set at Watershed, and hoarse-voiced me sang along. Then the next day my voice was nearly gone. I couldn't talk above a whisper. And as I recall, that was a pretty social weekend. There was a housewarming party for some good friends, and a meeting at church. The housewarming party was probably the nail in the coffin. Who What Where is a great game, but the little bit of talking it requires put my voice over its limit, and it took a week off.

For nearly a week, I couldn't talk. In a dire emergency, I could have whispered or maybe squeaked out a few words. Work wasn't too bad--I already had an assignment to work on, and the questions I did have I could IM or email. There was some good-natured teasing, but that was fine with me. I was supposed to teach in my ABF at church, but that obviously couldn't happen. My excuse was that I was too dumb to teach. Heh, heh. (And thanks to my last-minute substitute who did a great job of filling in!)

The difficult part of being voiceless was at home. I could nod and mime. For anything complicated, I had to write or type. Ubuntu comes with a text-to-speech program called espeak, which helped a bit. But typing is still slower, and it was made more frustrating by being treated differently. My dear wife felt the need to respond to my typing (or text-to-speeching) by taking my laptop and responding in kind. She felt like she was yelling when she was infinitely louder than I could be.

It was nearly a week before my voice came back to the point where it was usable. It didn't take long for me to start taking talking for granted again. But I do think I learned something about isolation, compassion, and treating people the way they want to be treated.

And I learned that even though I don't talk much, I really don't like being deprived of the option.