Overhearing People

[Carolina Kiltman]

I really AM hard of hearing. It's not all bad, really...

Me too, especially the upper frequencies. . . . comes in very handy at times. I can just turn off my hearing aids and most of the unpleasant chatter just disapears!

[Kilted Rogue]

While i was taking my son to see my wife for his mid- morning nursing (he is 4 months old) a gentleman called out across the parking lot. Hey is that a Kilt? I said Yes it is, am wearing a black UK mocker, his response was. Wow i have never see one living before. what he meant was he had never see one in the flesh. we both went a way with a smile

I just thought it was funny coming home and seeing this topic right when i logged on to XMTS

[csbdr]

Kids are the best. i remember my first real outing in public. I decided to go "whole-hog" and wear my new UK survival kilt to a party for my son's school. He's 5 1/2 at the time. all the kids and parent's know me, good friends, so really a situation pretty safe for my ego! As soon as I came in, I started to hear "Mommy, why's Cody's Dad wearing a dress?!" Of course, the more brash youngsters came right up and asked me. I actually converted one of the other Dads, who wore a UK to the next event!

[thoth51]

I was at a mall once in my olive AK when I crossed paths with two teenage girls chatting between themselves. I could literally hear the conversation behind me change topic mid-stream:
"...so like I was telling my is that man wearing a skirt?". The conversation stopped for a moment while the girl who was talking caught up with me. She asked if I was wearing a skirt, so I explained to she and her friend what a kilt was and where I got it.
I was glad that she was forthright enough to ask me to the face. In my country the average reaction to my kilt is a hushed whisper and averted eye contact.

[Andrewson]

Like most of you I tend to ignore the remarks I was not supposed to hear (and I've heard quite a few) but sometimes that is hard.

For instance, I was in a local supermarket shopping for vegetables when I overheard a 10 year old girl, standing with her mother alongside me but a few steps away, say to her mother "Why have you stopped picking up the carrots?". "Because I was just admiring the beautiful kilt that man's wearing over there," said her Mum. I could not suppress a smile.

That was a Blue Ramsay day. Last Saturday it was a Loud MacLeod (Bumbee) tartan day and that certainly got me quite a few admiring comments straight to my face. My daughter, though, strongly disapproved (on purely aesthetic grounds, she says) so, instead of walking with me she was deliberately a few steps ahead. Afterwards she said she'd picked up talk of "cross-dressing" from those coming towards me. I heard nothing of this and saw no specially antagonistic reactions either. Now was she deliberately reporting this to discourage me from ever wearing said Loud MacLeod in her presence again? Or is there really something outrageous about that tartan?

[Phogfan86]

I like MacLeod just for that very reason: it has to be noticed.

November 30 is the feast day of St. Andrew, so last year I decided to wear my kilt all day. I was going drop my son (10) off at parochial school, go to 8 a.m. Mass and then head off to work. I was decked out in kilt, sporran, hose & flashes, sgian dubh and a nice, heavy sweater. When I got him to school, my kiddo asked me to come in and show his teacher, and I was happy to.

I didn't really notice anything as we walked through the halls, but when we got to his classroom, there was lots of whispering and stares. His teacher did a great job of seizing the opportunity: she asked the class to take their seats and invited me to talk about my outfit, where it came from, family tartans, etc. The more I talked, the more interested the kids got. Needless to say, the boys were most interested in my sgian dubh.

Since the kids wear uniforms, I was even able to point out to the girls that their skirts were Black Stewart and Royal Stewart Tartan, which they thought was cool.

I live in Kansas, and frankly, I'm surprised at the lack of comments and weird looks I get. Granted, I'm pretty selective about where I go when wearing my male unbifurcated garment, but still...

My oldest son (16) and I went to Target after a recent St. Andrew Society meeting, and he even commented on the lack of stares.

[Geoff Withnell]

I was in Arundel Mills (a large outlet shopping mall near Annapolis) this weekend and overheard an amusing dialog. I heard behind me "Hey look at the weido in the skirt!" followed immediately by a loud whisper "It's a kilt, idiot, and he's wearing a Marine Corps flash on a Spec Ops beret, shut up!"
I was able to catch sight, reflected in a store window, of two teenage boys, who had for some reason found the opposite side of the mall fascinating.

Geoff Withnell

[TheKiltedCoder]

I was in Arundel Mills (a large outlet shopping mall near Annapolis) this weekend and overheard an amusing dialog. I heard behind me "Hey look at the weido in the skirt!" followed immediately by a loud whisper "It's a kilt, idiot, and he's wearing a Marine Corps flash on a Spec Ops beret, shut up!"
I was able to catch sight, reflected in a store window, of two teenage boys, who had for some reason found the opposite side of the mall fascinating.

Geoff Withnell

Kind of like my wife at work. She was telling some of her co-workers about my preference for being kilted, and that I'm hopefully going to be testing for my black belt in hapkido in a couple of months, and according to her, when she got to the end of the story, there was silence for perhaps 15 seconds.

Then, someone pipes up with, "Oh, so he's trolling for idiots. Got it."

Brian

[Highlander31]

I think people associate wearing a kilt with deafness. I've been out and around an hear people talking about my kilt. Sound travels especially well in bookstores and libraries. One instance was a lady at the bookstore talking about "the well-dressed Scotsman in a kilt over there." She was off further away than would've been considered polite for conversation but I said thank you across the store anyways. Anybody else have a similar experience?

While sound does travel more than people realize, part of the reason you hear the conversations, is you are more attuned to it when you are in the kilt. The mind is capable of much more than just functioning on the day-to-day level (a level most people spend their entire lives in.) Generally, people tend to tune out most sounds outside of their sphere of comfort (with the exception of sounds that warn of danger.) It has been my experience, a person can be taught to use this knowledge to selectively listen to conversations. To answer your question, it is normal for you to hear these things. Your mind is just bringing the comments regarding kilts to the conscious instead of dumping them in the subconscious.

[hallmarktex]

I really AM hard of hearing. It's not all bad, really...

I'm not hard of hearing, but my kids think I am. I've changed my will three times this year!