Communicating without words?

Communicating without words?

February 12, 2010, 12:24 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

A simple story happened in Simon Fraser University Surrey on February 20, 2009 at around 12:30pm. It was a warm and sunny afternoon; I was sitting in front of the big glass window at the end of the long corridor on the 3rd floor of the campus.

 As I was eating my lunch, I casually looked out the window and I sensed some movement out of the corner of my eyes. I looked to the left and saw a student in the opposite building connected to the campus. His eyes brightened when he met my gaze. He waved and pointed at the door. A partial of the building wall was made of glass which allowed me to see the three fire doors that trapped him. I acknowledged his need, and walked to the doors. When I reached them, there was a sign with red words that said Alarm will sound when opened. I hesitated and went back to the glass window. I waved at the person and tried to mouth: I cannot open the door. He obviously could not understand what I was trying to tell him. We have silent conversation for a few seconds and none of us understand each other. He made a gesture of No, and I copied him. His shoulders seemed to slump and I sat down again.

Although I stopped helping him, I kept my eyes on him. I saw he walked up to the fourth and fifth floor. He stopped on both floors for some minutes and tried to get people’s attention.  He was ignored. Eventually, he wandered back to the 3rd floor, and waved at me again. He pointed at the doors and I shook my head. I made a gesture of using the phone, but he shook his head and gestured something like “no batteries”.  I pointed down meaning I am going downstairs, and I mouthed: I will go get help, but I was pretty sure he didn’t know what I was doing. I went to the security desk and told the securities what was happening. They told me that a person cannot possibly be trapped in there. I asked about the alarm of the fire door and they seemed to ignore the question. They simply told me to tell him to “go back”, and he would be able to get out. I ran back up and told him to go back, by mouthing the words and pointing at the direction of his back. He turned around and anxiously looked. He mouthed something; I guessed it was “There are no doors”. I ran back down but got no useful answers back.

 We both were frustrated. I was frustrated because I couldn’t do anything to help, and he was frustrated because he couldn’t get out. He waved at me, took out his cell phone, and pointed at me. I took out mine. He started to tell me his cell phone number by using his fingers.  Although it was a desperate situation, I found the process quite fun. It was like we were back in the ancient time when people used body language to communicate.  It was a bit hard to see how many fingers he put up because of the sun light that reflected on the glass wall, and I actually took quite some time to count the fingers, but eventually I got his numbers. Both of us pressed the phone to our ear and waited expectedly.

There were no signals.

I ended the call and so did he. Then he pointed at me. I understood and started gesturing my phone numbers. I could sense people passing by staring at my somewhat awkward performance.My finger jumped to the talk button the moment my phone started ringing.

“Hello?”

“Hello?”  

We said at the same time. I paused and he started talking non-stop on how he got behind the three doors.

“I got lost and I went through the fire doors. I got through them all. Go open them, it won’t sound. Trust me.” He instructed.

 “Are you sure? But the sign…..” I hesitated.

“It won’t sound. Trust me.” He said again.

 So I ended the call and walked to the heavy fire doors. I looked at the sign and I looked at the glass holes on the doors. I saw the person looking at me behind three doors, almost pleadingly. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open———–

Nothing happened.

I opened the other two doors, and he finally got out. He thanked me twice and we said goodbyes. Then he walked down the corridor and I sat back down in front of the glass window.

 

I continued my lunch and felt accomplished. Yet, I thought maybe it would only take seconds if I was brave enough to open the doors in the first place.

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