Just A Little

Cooking wasn’t a skill I brought with me as a bride.

Rather to be totally honest, it was a shock when I learned how important it was.

And even more of a shock for my young bridegroom when he experienced some of our earliest culinary disasters, notably our first Thanksgiving dinner in Ohio. Without further explanation, I will say we ended up at a nearby Lakewood diner.

But that was ever so long ago, and with the encouragement and patience of a loving family, time spent in a kitchen did become both a challenge and fun.

Eventually, almost an avocation with one notable exception.

I could never master “shaving” cheese or any other important ingredient.

And surprisingly that term came to mind the other day reading about the new “skill” in town, Lip reading, To be abundantly clear, I am referring not to the technique that is vital to anyone with a hearing disability. My words concern only when lip reading is used for an intrusion into a conversation and then quoted without permission.

I thought with indignation I am losing my essence. It is being shaved slowly but surely and succinctly. My choice of privacy has been skillfully removed with the precision I never mastered.

The very basic right to maintain privacy in a conversation will be gone when and if someone across the room is able to lip read and/or interpret or misinterpret my words.

Undoubtedly, what they learn will be innocuous. My world is hot that exciting that it would arouse any curiosity. Still it is one more intrusion into personal privacy that seems to be slowly but surely shaved away.

And I find that just a little bit sad, far more than a disastrous dinner,