He Was Deaf But I Was Dumb

We had been sat down for about twenty minutes, contemplating the ways of the world and debating the issues of the week with friendly light hearted talk. It was more busy than the last time, but it was still only about half full.

A gentleman walked in and strolled around carrying a drink and something else. He walked up to the top: he caught my eye when he came back down. There was plenty of room to sit up there, but he came back down and walked past both of us. I saw that Rick kept his eye on him all the way down to the bottom. Not long later, this sole gentleman reappeared in my eyeline before he finally sat down. He sat down at the table next to us. By this time, we had both 'clocked' that something was odd about this man. The fact he was tightly clutching a large A4 writing pad and making strange sounding noises put us on edge.

Rick got up and went to the toilet. I had only about one fifth of my pint left. (Thwaites Bomber; the only place I have ever seen it on tap) As I took a drink, he came over to me and tapped me on te shoulder. He thrust his pad in front of me. On it, he had written some thing along the lines of "Hello, my full name is Roger ------ ------. I am from Manchester." As I am sure can be appreciated, this is a highly unusual occurance in a pub. Shaking a little, I wrote a scruffy reply, replacing his details with mine. As I did so, a text came on my phone and Rick reappeared back from the toilet. He looked quite shocked as he sat down, and, as a trigger movement, had a sip of his drink. His glass was emtpy. As I handed him my reply, I wondered why I couldn't talk to him. I read the text on my phone. It was from Rick, and read something along the lines of "Man, that guy is really freaking me out. Let's make a move."

He thrust the pad in my face again, this time asking me where I lived. "Right here in Lymm," I replied. Then it got really wierd. He drew a map, a big 'X' marking the pub and asking me to finish it off. I was a little worried by this. Who was this guy? And what did he want?! Rick saw what this man was asking me to do, and, being more assertive than I, he grabbed the pad and wrote something. I later found out he wrote what I call a 'put-down exit': "We're going now. Bye." and walked out, making eyes at me to leave. I hurried off, shaking hands with the man as I went. By the time we got to the car, I was well shaken, most perplexed by what had just happened. I could not think straight. What was wrong with that man?

He was deaf.

He had been deaf all his life and so couldn't talk. I didn't realise that at the time, and the experience scared me.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright.