Confession Time:
I cannot read lips.
I know, I know. It's a travesty, isn't it?
This fact becomes glaringly obvious in staff meetings when people try mouthing messages to me while someone else is talking. I sit there with a blank stare on my face and mouth back to them, "I can't read lips." To which they respond, "huh?"
So, apparently, I'm not the only with LRD (Lip Reader Deficiency).
I'll admit that there are several times that this has probably been a bad thing. For all I know, there could have been some random person across the room trying to mouth that they had a million dollars for me, but I'd never have known.
Perhaps this is why my dating life, P.K. (Pre-Katie), was so haphazard. I never consistently dated. Just little patches of dating here and there. Now that I start to think about it, that girl mouthing something across the bar in college could have been telling me she wanted to jump my bones, but all I got out of it was, "I like to eat scones."
I never understood how one learns to read lips. Honestly, these people must be considered some of the worst listeners in the field of one-on-one communication. I say this because, in my eyes, the only way to become adept at lip reading is to sit and watch someone's lips constantly and keep attempting to comprehend what is being said. This requires a complete tuning out of what is really being said by the speaker. The speaker then becomes frustrated by the fact that the recipient of their verbal message always hungers for triangular pastries over sex, and they move on to a more receptive listener.
And thus the lip-read learning cycle begins anew with a different subject.
Honestly, I don't think it's too terrible that I do not know how to read lips. It does have its moments of inconvenience, but overall, I can deal with it.
At least I'm not in a 12-step scone addiction program.
