Thread Roulette: Expert Researcher

[Event !]

Theresa McMaster has been assigned a project by her English teacher. She needs to find someone to interview, and then give a report about. After looking over the staff list for the school, she picked Aisling MacGreery, who agreed, thinking the interview would be done over email.

Nope. It's in person.

[Theresa McMaster]

Theresa walked into the lab and looked around, holding a pen and notepad in her hands and tapping her foot on the linoleum flooring. "Helloooooo," she called out, looking around the room for the woman she was supposed to speak with while simultaneously silently cursing English to a thousand burning hells.

[Aisling MacGrory]

Currently, Aisling was reviewing and looking through the results of her latest survey. She spent most of her time looking for patterns, and lately, they'd been having her focus more and more on developing patterns in meta behavior. Really, Aisling wasn't coming up with a great deal, and she was starting to get frustrated with the whole process. At least she had the whole interview thing to look forward to. Answering an enthusiastic student's questions via email would be a nice diversion from the work.

Aisling was just hitting reload on her phone, frowning at the screen and tapping it a few times to make sure the readout was correct. Just as she was about to try again, she heard someone calling hello, a rather young person doing so. Figuring that someone had gotten lost, Aisling pocketed her phone and hurried to see who it was.

A young girl, with a notepad and pen. Aisling paused, looked at the utensils, looked at the girl, and waved a tentative hello back. She tried a little signing first, just on the off-chance the girl knew ASL:
Are you lost?

A few seconds to see if that sank in, and then Aisling would attempt what essentially amount to charades. A bit demeaning, but it usually produced results, at least.

[Theresa McMaster]

Reese smiled at the girl who approached, but her expression turned quizzical when the girl made weird hand motions. Was that how this girl channeled her power or something? "Um.... hi?" She glanced around the room to see if anyone else was here. "I'm looking for Aisling. Aisling uh..." she glanced down at her scribbles on the notepad, "Aisling MacGrory. I have an interview with her for one of my classes."

[Aisling MacGrory]

There went that hope, unless the girl was being cruel. Aisling felt like sighing, but tried a half-hearted smile instead. At least you could smile and wave at someone for hi; everyone understood that gesture. More surprising was the next bit, where Theresa actually said Aisling's name. Likely the girl got the pronunciation wrong, since Aisling hardly looked like A's-ling, as opposed to "I-sling" or "Ahs-ling" or the billion other prognostications.

So Aisling ended up nodding, then pointed at herself. Yes, she was the researcher. As for the interview, well, Aisling wasn't quite sure what Theresa would manage when she didn't know sign. Especially because Aisling had to leave her cell phone at the entrance whenever entering the lab.

So the mute tilted her head to the side, her eyes going wide and her expression quizzical. What did the student want to ask? And how was she going to get those answers? Aisling was certainly willing to cooperate, and was already thinking of answers, but really, students were supposed to think of such things, weren't they?

[Theresa McMaster]

(Pronounced Aisling like Eyz-ling, like the 'ai' sound from rain, with a 'z' and a 'ling'. How is it supposed to be pronounced?)

Reese's eyes widened and her jaw dropped. "Oh my gosh, are you deaf?" But... she had responded to her question... "Wait, mute?" She smiled brightly. "This is perfect! I mean, it's not great that you can't speak because that sucks, really, but this is perfect for my project!" She pulled a piece of paper out of her notebook and pulled a pencil from her pocket, then handed them out to the girl. "I'm Reese by the way, but you already know that from my emails. Take these and let's get cracking. My project is on the importance of written vs. verbal communication. I can't believe of all the people in the school to interview I got the perfect one for this." Was she talking way too much in a subconscious attempt to compensate for Aisling's mute-ness? Probably.

[Aisling MacGrory]

Oh dear, she was one of those. The people who found mutes fascinating and what an interesting study they made. And wasn't Aisling just perfect for studying? Aisling suddenly felt like finding a hole and crawling into it for several weeks. She ended up blushing instead, taking the pad and pencil as though they might bite her.

Honestly, why couldn't more people just learn ASL?

Aisling scratched out words on the pad, wishing that her handwriting was more legible. Since she'd been born after the computer, and phones were fairly prevalent, Aisling didn't have quite the experience in writing as others did. At least she could write a few things:

What did you want to start out with? I can answer pretty well. I've done stuff like this before

She showed it to Theresa, smiling nervously, hoping that the message was clear.

[Theresa McMaster]

"Right then, I had some questions down but given this interesting development I think I'm going to shift the view of my essay just a bit. First though, how long have you been unable to speak? Like is it since birth?"

[Aisling MacGrory]

Great, the focus was suddenly going to be on that one super-awkward thing that Aisling never wanted to talk about. Because she totally wanted to sit through a long process where someone talked about how fascinating the whole not talking thing actually was. Wasn't this project supposed to be about her work as a researcher? Well, she needed to play along, at least for now, and she supposed it couldn't hurt. Aisling pasted on a smile, writing quickly:

I've been mute since birth, actually. My parents really didn't find out about it for a couple of years though. I wasn't much of a crier or anything. I've always been well-behaved

Which was true to this day, really. She smiled, hoping that she could just answer a few questions and get along to the whole researcher bit.

[Theresa McMaster]

Reese wasn't exactly the fastest reader in the world, so for a few possibly awkward seconds she sat there trying to decipher the words Aisling had written. Once she had, she nodded and made a note in her scribbler, then looked back at the girl and thought for a second. "How old are you now?"