12/29/2023 0 Comments The speed of soundNot - cre - even - m-ĭo you recognize the opening of "The Night Before Christmas"? Perhaps so, because in American culture the poem is familiar enough for one to fill in the blanks through memory. The brain, crafty as it is, fills in the missing information from my store of knowledge. But if I watch a certain way, I can bring them into enough focus to guess what they are. Spoken words occur in my blind spot, a vacancy of my perception. When I watch people's lips, I am trying to learn something about sound when the eyes were not meant to hear. It's essentially a skill of trying to grasp with one sense the information that was intended for another. Lipreading, on which I rely for most social interaction, is an inherently tenuous mode of communication. Well, at least I understood that part, I think as he walks out. I sit up straighter, attempt to concentrate, but again it reaches my eyes as a garbled mess. His eyebrows raise, but he nods and says it again. "Um, could you repeat that, please?" I ask. But despite my attention, something went wrong. I have no excuse, for I was looking straight at him. He proceeds to say something that looks like, "Would you graawl blub blub vhoom mwarr hreet twizzolt, please?" I haven't the faintest idea what he said. "Oh, right." His expression changes: to surprise, and then to caution. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you come in," I say. Only when a sudden hand taps my shoulder do I jump. Absorbed by my computer screen, I do not notice when my manager enters the room, much less when he starts talking. I am sitting in my office during a summer internship.
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