My Ears Made Me Rich.

In my childhood I was blessedly healthy in every respect except for a particular problem with my hearing. My problem was background noise, and I certainly grew up with a lot of that. My family always had a TV or radio on, and found no difficulty in chatting at the same time. But I couldn’t cope with that.

My way of compensating for all the noise was to focus on my parent’s lips, to “see” what they were saying. I learnt to read their lips.

My lip-reading skills evolved in kindergarten and school, and by the time I graduated from college I had honed my special skill well beyond the close encounters of family life. I became very good at reading lips from a distance, and in profile. Of course people with moustaches and beards presented special difficulties - but generally I saw enough to get the gist of their conversations.

After graduation, my workplace was fun – open plan and full of hardworking, likeable people. From my swivel office chair, I could see into the boardroom, and into every similarly glass-clad office occupied by a director. So my lip-reading skills kept me well informed of management discussions and plans – well in advance of any formal information being trickled down to the staff.

I became well-liked by my fellow workers for my “guesses” about the next pay rise, and for my “opinions” about who was likely to be promoted. It would have been easy for me to make some extra money by taking bets on these outcomes, but my sights were set higher than that.

My meteoric rise to the very top was based on different knowledge. After only two years of lip-reading from afar, I knew which directors were insider-trading on the stock market, fiddling the books, and having extra-marital affairs. And I let them know I knew. So they promoted me. Then they promoted me more. And after a while, they started promoting me at each other’s expense.

I’m top dog now, and earning a fortune. From my glass-clad office, I can see all my staff, and lip-read to my heart’s content.

And I sport a very bushy beard, which I am lovingly stroking as I speak. You can’t be too careful now-days, can you?