Communication is something that most of us take for granted, but it is a very important part of our life. For most of us, we use verbal communication and when we say something, the person we are speaking to hears it. We also realize that a lot of communication is nonverbal and according to some estimates, only 7% of all communication is verbal in nature. There are also some types of communication that are 100% nonverbal, and that includes sign language. Deaf people around the world are able to communicate using this language, but what happens when an individual is both deaf and blind?
That issue came up on an airline recently, when a flight attendant came over the intercom to ask if anybody knew sign language. Fortunately, there was a 15-year-old girl named Clara on board who had been studying sign language and she wanted to help out. The flight attendant told her the passenger was both blind and deaf, so she wanted to know if Clara could finger spell. She could, and she sat down next to Tim Cook, a 64-year-old man who needed some help.
The flight attendants realized that Tim needed some assistance but they didn’t know how to communicate with him. Clara had been signing for about a year but she showed a lot of confidence by taking his hand and allowing him to communicate with her. She provided information on when the plane would arrive and even helped him to get some water.
Clara said that Tim had another issue that most people didn’t realize. He was lonely, so she had the opportunity to take care of that and many other issues. There was someone else on the plane named Lynette who saw what was happening and wrote the following on Facebook: “I don’t know when I’ve ever seen so many people rally to take care of another human being. All of us in the immediate rows were laughing and smiling and enjoying his obvious delight in having someone to talk to.”
It’s a beautiful thing when people take care of each other. Watch more in this video:
