If she was answering a question, she didn’t usually do it, but when talking aloud to herself, Kippy always held her hand in front of her mouth as here, sharing a bench with Linda in Clearwater.
I couldn’t figure it out until I tried it myself. It has the effect of reflecting your voice back to your ears. You hear your own voice more clearly. Since she was compelled by her Tourette”s Syndrome to talk most of the time, in my strongest memories of Kippy, I see her holding her hand like this, talking incessantly, eyebrows raised, smiling and gazing abstractedly off into the distance.
I’ve heard that people of various Mediterranean extractions “can’t talk without their hands,”. This was true for Kippy but in a different way. Read Kippy’s story in The Girl Who Talked Too Much, now out on Amazon. Go to the memoir section to order.
Ann Dickinson Sargent 