The Steps to Reading Body Language 27
One of the photos I show to provoke class analysis invariably
gets the same reaction. The photo captures the face of women in
babushkas. The students uniformly respond with descriptors, such
as “weak,” “frail,” and “helpless.” I remind them of the so-called
Black Widows, Olga Rutterschmidt and Helen Golay—73 and 75,
respectively, when they were captured in 2006—who murdered
homeless men as part of their insurance scams. I find this to be a
cultural bias. In a culture that values youth and vigor, the old cannot
possibly be dangerous. Most Americans never consider what they
would think if they met a 65-year-old Harrison Ford who didn’t
have the benefit of makeup and a good camera angle. Is he still
Indiana Jones, or is he suddenly Professor Henry Jones?
Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is now serving a life sen-
tence at the Federal Administrative Maximum Penitentiary hospital
in Colorado, is a blind Muslim cleric. Linked to the 1993 World
Trade Center bombing, among other heinous acts, he may have
looked pathetic, but his fatwa calling for violence again U.S.
civilian targets made a powerful terrorist.
What I teach the pros
Communication
I break human communication into three channels:
ƒ Verbal: Word choice.
ƒ Vocal: All human voice components that do not include
word choice.
ƒ Non-verbal: All other pieces of communication.