Timing is everything....
I go hang out at one of the local yarn stores Friday evenings...if I'm not working. Did so today...more often than not some of us hanging out long after the store closes...tonight was no different. So, I'm pulling into the parking lot of our apartment at about 9pm. A FIRE TRUCK pulls up behind me [not into the lot, but next to it on the street], and the first-response guys are on their way in before I'm out of the car. So I get into the building, they're all clustered by the door down the hall from us.
Now, the guy that lives there is blind and deaf. BOTH of which I ended up informing the first responders of...apparently he has a 'lifeline', and it went off, and that's why they were there. Of course, they had NO IDEA how to communicate with the guy [and yes, one of them was trying to track someone down who could come to the scene to help them].
I knew the hubby did, so I offered to go get him. They said sure, and off I went. See, one of the times he'd taken Ebony out for a potty run earlier this week, he'd run into the guy's son, and they started talking, and the hubby learned just *how* they communicate. [basically from what I saw tonight, the guy cups his hands around yours when you sign...] And he's FAR BETTER with sign even now than I was even when we were trying to learn it, and I knew he could finger spell, and sure enough he started talking with our neighbor to explain what was going on. Of course *then* we learned that one of the EMTs [I think? There were like five people there...LOL], one of them anyway said that he could finger spell, and once he'd seen the hubby talk to the neighbor he knew what to do.
All of them were TOTALLY fascinated when they were first watching though, because all of them were like 'how the heck do you communicate with someone who can't see you?'. And though the neighbor didn't know why his lifeline alarm went off, they still had to go in and reset it.
And me, all I could think of was that if I'd gotten home five minutes earlier, I would have missed them totally, and they'd have NO IDEA why the guy kept coming to the door and then shutting it on them [because none of them were giving any indication that they were there because they had no idea he COULD NOT SEE them! Or hear them!]. If the hubby hadn't taken out the dog just when he did, and struck up the conversation that he did, he would have had no idea how communication with the neighbor actually occurred.
In the end the neighbor was perfectly fine, it was a false alarm, but still it's kind of amazing sometimes how things can happen just so and end up coming in handy.
Now, the guy that lives there is blind and deaf. BOTH of which I ended up informing the first responders of...apparently he has a 'lifeline', and it went off, and that's why they were there. Of course, they had NO IDEA how to communicate with the guy [and yes, one of them was trying to track someone down who could come to the scene to help them].
I knew the hubby did, so I offered to go get him. They said sure, and off I went. See, one of the times he'd taken Ebony out for a potty run earlier this week, he'd run into the guy's son, and they started talking, and the hubby learned just *how* they communicate. [basically from what I saw tonight, the guy cups his hands around yours when you sign...] And he's FAR BETTER with sign even now than I was even when we were trying to learn it, and I knew he could finger spell, and sure enough he started talking with our neighbor to explain what was going on. Of course *then* we learned that one of the EMTs [I think? There were like five people there...LOL], one of them anyway said that he could finger spell, and once he'd seen the hubby talk to the neighbor he knew what to do.
All of them were TOTALLY fascinated when they were first watching though, because all of them were like 'how the heck do you communicate with someone who can't see you?'. And though the neighbor didn't know why his lifeline alarm went off, they still had to go in and reset it.
And me, all I could think of was that if I'd gotten home five minutes earlier, I would have missed them totally, and they'd have NO IDEA why the guy kept coming to the door and then shutting it on them [because none of them were giving any indication that they were there because they had no idea he COULD NOT SEE them! Or hear them!]. If the hubby hadn't taken out the dog just when he did, and struck up the conversation that he did, he would have had no idea how communication with the neighbor actually occurred.
In the end the neighbor was perfectly fine, it was a false alarm, but still it's kind of amazing sometimes how things can happen just so and end up coming in handy.