Friday, February 5, 2010

The ominous and titillating world of failing sight

Dimming sight can make the world a stranger place. Walking past a restaurant in town, the blackboard seems to say in big chalk letters 'Titilate'. Puzzled, I pause and lean in close - it's only 'open till late'. Walking the dog this morning past the place we call the bus garage, and there in big letters against the misty hillside the sign says: 'Ominous'. Refocus. 'Omnibus'. And I am guessing dimming sight was one of the reasons a friend received a text the other day that said 'hand sexing wit grnnr'. She held it up frowning for me to see, 'Does that say what I think it does?' Turns out the sender uses predictive text, and famously doesn't check it  - so I gave it a try on my phone and we found out this very nice middle-class, middle-aged woman with many children was actually sitting at home 'hand-sewing and ironing'.

5 comments:

Andrea Eames said...

I completely sympathise. My sight is awful, and I always misread signs, texts and other important things that I shouldn't misread.

Rachel Fenton said...

My much younger brother once asked why "that man" was staring at him from across the road..."that man" turned out to be a wheelie bin!

maggie@at-the-bay.com said...

I just say yay for anyone who can hand sew and iron at the same time which could be the mitigating circumstances around not checking predictive text...

Mind you, it does sound far too "predictable" that she was ironing and or sewing, rather than the other...

oh dear.. gotta dash.

Elisabeth said...

Pity about the bad eyesight. But life might be more fun with it.

I prefer to travel without glasses sometimes because everything looks better and I cannot see dust, mess stains or anything suchlike that might otherwise bother me.

Private said...

Haha! I tend to send texts like that as well - it's terribly embarrassing!

I recently found your blog, and I really enjoy reading it. So I thought I'd let you know that I I've linked to it from my blog... Hope that's okay?

XX Alexandra.