Member-only story
an Art of Dying fragment
An experiment: Could Mom read lips?
My friend Åke (he was my age, i.e., six or so, and lived with his parents and two older sisters, Inger and Karin, across the third-floor landing from us) and I were discussing lip reading. Though I’m not sure what experience we based it on, the consensus we arrived at was that it was very hard to read lips and that you had to have special training or you had to be amazingly gifted in order to so.
Yes, I swallowed this conviction hook, line and sinker, so I felt pretty safe in carrying out my experiment with Mom.
Which was as follows:
I would ask Mom to watch my lips.
She would agree.
I would quietly mouth, “You are a crazy witch-devil.”
Mom’s uncomprehending expression would confirm what I suspected, i.e., that she was not specially trained nor amazingly gifted and could not read lips.
Okay, here we go.
Mom stood a couple of feet from me, looking down at me looking up at her. Silently I mouthed the test phrase.
I’d say my burning cheek was smarting for a good ten minutes after that.
© Wolfstuff
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