With almost superhuman abilities they can read erased print from a page, navigate in a pitch black room, without one gizmo squads of them in group operations can communicate silently with mysterious hand signals. These agents of amazing abilities need no GPS because they can find their way home literally blindfolded. With a keen sense of smell they can pick you out of a room full of people or read your lips from across the room.

Who are these skilled superhuman people you may ask?

With almost superhuman abilities they can read erased print from a page, navigate in a pitch black room, without one gizmo squads of them in group operations can communicate silently with mysterious hand signals.  These agents of amazing abilities need no GPS because they can find their way home literally blindfolded.  With a keen sense of smell they can pick you out of a room full of people or read your lips from across the room.

Who are these skilled superhuman people you may ask?

Every May, the nation's attention is focused on hearing loss during Better Hearing and Speech Month. This is the month that there is a major push to get more people screened for hearing loss. We encourage everyone to get their hearing tested this month, it's a matter of survival.

In addition we would like to salute not just the hearing and speech heroes, but also the visually impaired. They teach us what is possible and ultimately provide new skills for mankind.  Out  of necessity and hard training the impaired have developed things like "human echolocation," "smell vision," complex sign languages, lip reading, reading with your fingers and even "holographic vision" and limbs.

I remember meeting an amazing woman back when I was a child of around 12. My father took me to meet this woman with plans to get me to see things a different way. He knocked on the door and she told us to come in. I noticed nothing odd about the old woman; she looked like anyone's grandmother, kind and soft-spoken. She offered us something to drink and something to snack on and then something surprising happened.  My father asked her for her phone number so she asked him for a piece of paper. He handed her the small notepad from his pocket but before she started to write she stopped and replied, "There is something on this paper from your notebook you gave me, is it important?"  The paper had writing on it that had been erased.  One might say that is not difficult to see but our lady of the hour was stone cold blind. She began to read back the erased print from the page to make sure it was not important. Pardon the pun but it opened my eyes. She knew all this by running her fingers over the paper. She could read print with her fingertips as fast as people with clear sight.

Another suprising talent was her sense of smell that was better than a blood hound. She could tell what you ate earlier and where you stood and a likelyhood of where you had been based on smells in the room.

I often remember stories about that when a person loses one of their senses that the rest or one in particular becomes super heightened. My father asking her to tell me how she gained theses skills, told me, practice, pay attention, focus, and practice some more. She earned my respect, this was all practice until it became a skill. The woman could not see three inches in front of her face yet she could read print faster than most people and was more aware of her surroundings than I had ever imagined one could be.

Many get turned around while taking a quick stroll in the woods resulting in search parties, and often in injuries or worse, all for lack of paying attention to where you are in this world. How little do we take stock of where we are and appreciate the God given gifts of our many senses.  The color of plants that tell us of harvest or the shape they take from coming bad weather. Smell of a carcass in the woods may mean wolves are near while sounds of birds can tell you about other predators, water, and food if you know how to listen.

Take time to appreciate your senses and process the information around you. Get to know your surroundings both city/suburb and wilderness. A man who does not know the land around him is an alien in his surroundings.

Sensory training social experiment:

Try wearing an eye blind/mask for 24-48 hours and you will soon learn to make your abode friendlier to situations where there may be a blackout or loss of sight from a catastrophe or accident. Going silent for a while is another interesting challenge. You never now how much you rely on your voice until you cannot use it.

Play a "What If" game with your family. Tornadoes, floods, and smoke from fires can cause loss of power putting you and your loved ones in the dark and without heat. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours without electricity as a drill can turn into fun with family games around a candle if one can remember where they are. Make a list of things you will need like candles, an alcohol cooking stove (make one or buy one), drinking and bathing water, and of course some food that is easy to cook in an emergency. This is good practice to help rotate those canned goods and other items that need restocking from old expiration dates. Check your first aid kit also and make sure the items have not expired.

During a real emergency use all your senses instead of freezing up. Smell, do you smell fire or moisture? If the smell is like rubber it may be burning wires which means electrocution is a danger. Use your eyes to look for smoke and loose beams, boards, and branches. Use your ears to listen for falling debris. If you cannot smell anything, taste the air. Feel the door low not near metal during a fire, is it too hot to exit?

You may not learn to see in the dark with human echolocation, read erased print with our fingers or other seemingly superhuman things, but by taking time to appreciate the senses we have through preparing to survive during emergencies and appreciating and learning about nature all around us we all then are a superhuman to ourselves and most importantly to our families.
References:

Blind Man 'Sees'
Holographic vision experiences.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18487511



Human echolocation

The ability of humans to sense objects in their environment by hearing echoes from those objects. This ability is used by some blind people to navigate within their environment. They actively create sounds, such as by tapping their canes or by making clicking noises with their mouths. Human echolocation is similar in principle to active sonar and to the animal echolocation employed by some animals, including bats and dolphins. - Wikipedia.