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Though often lumped together, deaf people and mute people are two separate types of
people, and just because one is deaf does not mean that they are mute.
Caused by illness, injury, or medical mistake, muteness can rob someone of their primary
method of communicating with the world, but have you ever wondered what it would be like
to never use your voice again?
Hello and welcome to another special Challenge episode of The Infographics Show- today we're
going to be once more using your favorite, and our least important, guinea pig- we mean
staff writer- to find out what life is like if you don't speak for a week!
Day 1: Wow.
When I started doing all these challenge episodes for Infographics I thought it'd be kind of
fun, something that takes you out of your comfort zone and maybe pushes your boundaries
a bit- all while getting paid for it!
Sounded like a win/win for someone adventurous like me.
Then I started actually doing the challenges- no underwear for a month, ok that's easy enough.
Don't leave the house for a month, umm ok not so easy.
Sleep all night and stay up all day for a month, alright, getting rougher.
Eat all your food through a straw for a week- now it's getting painful.
My point is that when I started these I tried to think of all the zany things I might end
up doing, and not once did I think about not speaking for an entire week.
I can only be grateful that the devils that The Infographics Show secretly worships and
feeds a steady diet of human misery- my misery- didn't decide to make this a month-long challenge
as well.
So, I get to experience what life is like for someone who can not speak for a whole
week, which- and I hate this about me- I am kind of interested to try already.
That's despite the fact that I've done this whole schtick long enough to know that it's
going to get difficult, and then it's going to be painful in some way or another.
This time at least it's pretty obvious- how in the world am I going to get through life
without speaking for a whole week?!
Luckily we are living in the digital age, and as I sat down to plan out the scope of
this challenge I realized that I might actually be able to breeze through without uttering
a single word.
Instead of calling someone on the phone, I can text.
Instead of going to the grocery store, I can have groceries or food delivered to me via
an app, and I never once have to talk to anyone.
The real problem is going to be dealing with the girlfriend, since as most of you know
by now we live together.
That and any unexpected social plans- which I'm insisting that we don't change at all,
because the challenge is only fair if I get a real taste of what this lifestyle is like.
So if any events or things pop up, I'll be attending, as a complete mute.
That will take some serious explaining.
I'll update once every two days or so, fill you in on my week of silence.
Right now it's 7 am on Monday and my last official words for a week were a really bad
dad joke I told the girlfriend as she was leaving for work: Did you hear about the restaurant
on the moon?
Great food, but no atmosphere.
I love dad jokes.
I just realized though that if something tragic and sudden were to happen to me, a dad joke
may be the last thing anyone ever heard me say.
I'm kind of ok with that.
Day 3: Life is certainly interesting when you're not allowed to speak.
It's weird how quiet the house gets during the day without me speaking.
I typically work from home if I'm not out on a gig as a photographer, and I have the
house to myself with the dog until late at night when the girlfriend gets back.
I never realized how much I talk to myself out loud when home alone though until suddenly
I couldn't talk anymore.
I guess we all talk to ourselves sometimes, but it became pretty obvious these last two
days that I probably do it more than the average person because the house just feels so eerily
silent now.
It's kind of been creeping me out to be honest, so now to compensate I play the tv extra loud.
You know that irrational feeling that a serial killer is lurking in your quiet house?
I get that feeling all the time now.
I tried to do my plan of having groceries delivered to me so I would avoid the hassle
of trying to play mute in public, but then I saw what the delivery fees were for someone
to bring me groceries from literally right across the street and I flat out refused to
do it.
It's not that I'm cheap, it's just preposterous I'm paying almost $5 extra for what is literally
a three minute walk for me.
Also I realized that I would look like the laziest human being alive to the delivery
driver if I seriously had them drive from wherever in town they were just to bring me
groceries from across the street.
That is a problem I did think up a solution for though, I could pull out my crutches from
when I was injured a long time ago and pretend I couldn’t walk.
But ultimately I just couldn't stomach paying $5 for a three minute walk.
So my first foray into the real world without speaking was mostly uneventful.
I typically wear headphones and blast music anyways when I go out because I'm not really
a people person, and it's the perfect way to ignore girl scouts or anyone with a clipboard
who wants your support for a million different causes.
Once I got stopped by a lady who said she was signing a petition for improved mental
health care for kids in public school.
I told her I hated kids with mental health- and she never bothered me again for the rest
of the week she was in front of our grocery store.
The girlfriend was with me and she was so embarrassed that she punched me hard in the
arm and told her I was joking, but while she wasn't looking I gave the petition lady the
craziest look I could- and it worked.
Bought myself one week of peace.
Once I did the same with girl scouts, just kneeled down and started explaining how she
was being exploited for her labor by the cookie maker, and only receiving a tiny fraction
of the value of her labor in return.
And even that was in the form of funds for her troop to go camping or something, while
the cookie company kept most of the monetary profits.
One of the adults quickly pulled the little girl away and I didn't get bothered again
for the rest of the month that they were there.
Anyways, the trip went off without a hitch until I got to the register and the girl tried
to make conversation.
See I go to this grocery store all the time, for seven years now, so everyone there knows
me.
I couldn't just blow the cashier off, so instead I just pointed at my throat and pretended
to be sick.
Luckily she bought it, but it made me realize something.
See my plan had been to just pretend to be mute, but suddenly I feel really uncomfortable
just pretending to be mute and having people believe I have a real disability.
It feels like a terrible thing to do when there's thousands of real people out there
who are unable to speak.
I guess I'll stick with the sick story for now, but I doubt it'll hold in a serious social
engagement.
The other thing to report is that the girlfriend has been texting me a lot.
She won't admit it but I think she secretly really misses talking to me so she's overcompensating
with texts.
It's kind of sweet, and thinking about it suddenly made me feel kind of sad.
Day 5: Well, this challenge has been a lot easier than I thought it would be- mostly
because I work from home and my writing work requires very little actual voice communication
with clients.
However, last night the heat got turned up to 11.
The girlfriend's work had a social mixer type event.
Typically I hate these things, but from time to time the girlfriend will drag me to one
though, and I tend to spend the time at the open bar doing my best to really push the
generosity of the free drinks- especially the gin and tonics.
We decided that my cover story would be that I was really ill and my voice was practically
gone and it was painful for me to speak.
Girlfriend made something up about laryngitis or something, she knows just enough about
medicine to make it believable.
As we were on our way I wasn't happy at first, until I realized that now I had the perfect
excuse not to speak to anyone at this event, and that suddenly made me really happy.
Until the girlfriend told me she wasn't going to let me spend the entire night at the open
bar, “People need to see your face more at these things, it's good to network”,
she said.
If people want to see more of me, they can always right-click save my facebook profile
pic.
Then they can see me anytime they like.
To say that the girlfriend took full advantage of the fact that I couldn't refute anything
she or anyone else said would be an understatement.
She committed us to at least a dozen little dinner dates with other couples- which I hate
with all my heart- and she committed us to a game night with a bunch of people I don't
know.
I love board games, but I hate playing them with a bunch of strangers.
Once I played Cards Against Humanity with a group of total strangers and let's just
say that the night ended with someone crying after I played a “dead parents smell like...”
card.
Apparently her parents had just died a week or two earlier and everyone but me- the stranger-
knew.
I don't know when the girlfriend discovered that she had the power to commit me to all
sort of things I would never, ever do, but I suspect that she'd been planning it from
the get-go, because she is in fact a sadistic and evil genius.
To say I was annoyed would be an understatement.
Day 7: I can finally speak again!
Holy crap I have seriously missed the sound of my own voice.
The first time I talked my vocal chords squeaked from disuse, but thankfully I was by myself
when it happened.
This challenge has been... difficult to say the least, and not just because of not being
able to talk, but because of fighting the urge to speak in the first place.
We take talking for granted, and it becomes really obvious when you stop talking just
how much we use voice for communication- yes, even in our digitally connected world.
I know what you're all thinking of though- what happened at game night?
Well, it was predictably terrible for one, and I'm not sure if not talking made it worse
or not.
We played Risk, which doesn't really require any talking so that's great- except I get
really competitive with board games.
Like, really competitive.
See, there's an unspoken social contract you enter into when you do a 'fun board game night'
with your girlfriend's friends and co-workers.
You play to have fun, not to win, and you are nice to the people who are terrible at
the game and make sure they are included and get to play and have fun.
I don't play to have fun, I play to win.
I was Napoleon slashing my way across Europe and Asia, making and breaking alliances as
it suited me.
The game was over in thirty minutes which I feel is some kind of record, and all without
me saying a word- just writing messages out on a notepad.
The great thing about people believing that you are really ill and can't speak though
is that nobody tries to- so no awkward forced conversation with a bunch of strangers.
That was a big plus for me, and something I could get used to.
I've spent the week communicating via post-it notes or text messages and my final report
is that it's really, really lonely not having a conversation with someone.
Sure, modern life might make it really easy to not use your voice to talk, but it also
robs your conversations of depth and meaning.
They don't flow the way they would if you could speak, and I think the event that summed
it up best for me was when me and the girlfriend were driving home last night.
She got really sad and said that she really missed me this week, and I knew what she was
saying: not being able to have conversations with me really made her miss me.
Then she told me that she'd been thinking about the same thing I had thought about on
day one, after I spoke the last thing I've said to her all week- she said, what if something
really sudden and tragic happened and the last thing I ever heard from you was one of
your stupid bad jokes?
I could tell she was really sad, so I grabbed her phone and pulled up her voice memos and
showed her that before the week started I had recorded, “I love you”, on her phone.
Not speaking may be a great way to get you out of really boring or dreadful social events
you don't want to attend, or at least get you out of having to talk to anyone at those
events, but it really boxes your life in.
You don't realize how free you are to express yourself with your voice until it's no longer
there, and conversations without it are slow, frustrating, and really shallow.
I have a newfound appreciation for the struggles of mute people, or even deaf people who have
difficulty speaking with people and making themselves understood.
Thinking about trying out your own no speaking challenge?
Wonder what you’ll do to fill the time?
How about finally designing that website you keep putting off?
But don’t worry, it’s going to be much easier than any of our challenges, because
you’ll be using Wix.
Their powerful design tools let you build a site in seconds using fully customizable
templates, or build it from the ground up with their robust suite of design tools.
Plus their subscription services offer 24/7 tech support and an extensive knowledge base
is always available to help you take on any problem.
Try out Wix today by visiting the link in the description or going to wix.com/go/infographics2019.
Think you could handle not speaking for a week?
What other challenges should we put our favorite lab rat through?
Let us know in the comments!
And if you liked this one, check out I Didn't Wear Underwear For A Month.
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