One day I was fooling around with the built-in Speech program on my Mac, and started playing with some of the voices. I ended up having conversations with myself, just sitting there. I sensed confusion, impatience and condescension. I am a quick and I daresay witty speaker. Who knows how patient I would be? One on one, conversations-by-note went all right. God knows my wife tried to help out, but people.are people. They wouldn't know what that meant, either. I would point to right (the past), to suggest I was responding to something said earlier. When my note was finally read, I would hear, What's this about?Or I don't know what that means. They would hold it, finish, and be responded to by someone else. I would finish my note, and hand it to a person who was speaking. Something would be said, I would begin writing a comment, and someone else would speak. There is a ground rule in the treatment of those who cannot speak their written notes must take precedence. There is a point when a zinger is perfectly timed, and a point when it is pointless. And notes were unbearably frustrating for a facile speaker like me, accustomed to dancing with the flow of the conversation. This got the message across, but was too time-consuming for communications of any length. Soon after my second surgery, when it became apparent I wouldn't be able to speak, I of course started writing notes.
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