You can talk!

I have had laryngitis so many times in my life that I am accustomed to the odd phenomenon of people whispering back to me when I whisper a phrase, even though they are perfectly able to talk. This time was different because I was totally silent.  I would mouth words and try to make myself understood with gestures and motions, and they would mouth words back to me.  Or I would point to what I needed, and the person would point to the object and nod back at me to acknowledge understanding my gesture.  But the funniest reaction came in the grocery store when I ran into one of my friends.  I had my trusty clipboard with "NO VOICE" written on the top.  I turned it around so she could see it and then wrote something on the clipboard that I wanted to say to her.  She reached for my pen and clipboard to write back to me!  I quickly wrote,  "You can talk!" underlining it for additional emphasis.  We both laughed as she realized she wasn't consigned to writing on the clipboard to have a conversation with me.

I told one of my friends about the way people seemed to mimic my alternatives to talking, and she sent me the following story:

One of my very favourite passages from Chateaubriand (Mémoires d'outre-tombe) is when he is walking across France, back from exile in England where he has had to hang out for a number of years to escape the French revolution. Most of his family have been guillotined. So he's hungry, shabby, dressed like a hobo (he's broke), when he is taken in for dinner by a noble family who have somehow come through the period with their property and lives intact. They receive him in the chateau dining room. They're all dressed in their gardening clothes. That's so he won't feel conspicuous in his rags !! He remembers this small act of kindness years later after serving as ambassador and minister and counselor to heads of state. 

My friend thinks people mimic me to make me feel comfortable with my inability to talk by giving up that ability as well. It's an interesting perspective.  It's almost universal, and it happens so quickly, and so naturally, that I'm not sure there is a thought process leading to the copied interaction. Being voiceless for so long allowed me to experience this phenomenon enough times to believe it is a very strong, unconscious manifestation of our need to connect with each other.