The Nice Thing About Strangers
Creative Non-Fiction Short Stories. :) Travel, Oldsters, Love, and Compassion.
Double Czech
The Czech woman forgot her hearing aids. She is supposed to be doing the Reading at Mass, but there are two options in the Lectionary and, “oh dear, oh my, I do not know which I must read…” She polls a woman in the neighboring pew, but her question comes with such unintentional volume that the whole chapel becomes privy to her dilemma. She hustles to the podium to investigate the two options. She confers with a woman in the front row, who recommends that she asks the Deacon. She tracks the Deacon, who seems to be saying “The First.” She hears, or chooses to hear, “The Second, okay, the Second.”
He tries to correct her as she rushes away. Agreeing with his unheard suggestion, she relays the already broadcast message to the friend in the front, then her neighbor near the back. The crisis has been averted (without anyone noticing, she beams). “Yes, I will read the Second one.”
Then she offers one more non-clandestine stage-whisper to her neighbor, just before the shaky a cappella hymn begins, “Good, yes. The First reading was a little fluffy anyway.”
–Colorado Springs, Colorado
The Nice Thing About Strangers 
How delightful! Somehow those sotto voce remarks are often even funnier than words spoken out loud…
Aw, little old ladies can be so adorable. I hope to be one someday.
Agreed! I can’t wait! 🙂
this relatively new blogger, writer and poet sincerely thanks you for liking some of my work on the 20 Lines A Day Poetry page, the encouragement means a lot to me. i truly love small moments like the one in your essay. they would go by unnoticed if not for observers like you and i.
::::merci::::and keep the light.
I worked at a small Baptist church in rural Missouri for several years, and we had an older gentleman who led our music in the early service, by the name of Ed, whose hearing aid never worked properly. Whistled its way through every service in my three years there. And of course, Ed was the only person in the room who couldn’t hear it. And Howard, the sound-deacon in the balcony, whose vocabulary was no respecter of context, would holler at Ed from across the sanctuary, and Ed, who of course couldn’t hear a word he was saying–even the four-letter ones–would smile benignly and nod. And the hearing aid would go right on whistling…
I LOVE that! 🙂 Haha! What an awesome story! I would have been a very, very regular churchgoer for that alone. Thanks for making me grin like crazy today!