Talk, Talk, Talk – App Fail

While in Berlin, Della, Martin and I chatted via three way text messaging. They’d speak into the little mic at the base of their iPhones and, if I hadn’t already successfully lipread them, all I had to do was look down at my own phone. Awesome – a Closed Captioned life!

After these smooth convos (as smooth as it gets given deafness and my lack of fluency in anything but the written word), I fully expected Pop and I’d have an easy peasy time of it on our own. Nope. BIG FAT nope. While voice recog tech is always improving, it just ain't up to the challenge of Daddy and me. Not yet.

We mostly played it old-school with ASL and fingerspelling. He still remembers a lot BUT his old hands are crabbed up (dude will NOT be playing the piano again) so it’s hard to tell what he’s “saying.” I generally do OK-ish with lipreading BUT, now that the old man’s toothless….well…all his words look very different. I’ve a hell of a time – it's frustrating for us both.

I only see him a few times or so a year (and who knows how much longer he'll carry on) so I want to be my very best, most fluorescently entertaining self with him. I want to see him smile BIG.

Our confabs have always been laugh packed, Dada-esque word rambles – I can't recall a time they weren't. We jump from subject to subject, riding one odd connection into the next like downhill racers on Denali. Enormo fun but a giant challenge now that my sound system’s crapped out. I want our Word Fests to be like old times, before the slings and arrows of outrageous health nailed us both. Of course.

We can still have these but Jen’s gotta be there to ‘terp. Luckily she’s totes down with our randomly surreal, Lindy Hopping word play.

It's a cloud desert!