I always watch TV shows and movies with closed captions turned on. Not because I’m hard of hearing—in fact, I might be soft of hearing, since everything sounds a bit too loud to me. Even a pin dropping sounds like someone just got a strike at the bowling alley. Speaking of which, why do they call it an alley? It sounds like a place where you’d get mugged by a gang of guys wearing matching shirts with their names embroidered on them.
But back to the captions. I like them because they turn a show into a live-action book. But it got me thinking: if these are closed captions, what would open captions be like? Maybe you could change the color or style of the words. Imagine watching a gritty crime drama, but the captions look like they’re written in crayon. It would turn a standoff between a cop and a criminal into something resembling a handmade card from a child, with oversized misspelled words, and a few backwards letters—transforming the tension into something oddly heartwarming. I’m always looking for ways to make suspense a little more ridiculous.
Another perk of closed captions is that I can pretend I have superpowers, like the ability to predict what a character’s going to say next. It’s like I’m a mind reader! Maybe I should brand myself as “The Caption Clairvoyant,” predicting dialogue with eerie accuracy (thanks to the captions, of course). My crystal ball? It would have subtitles too, just in case my clients couldn’t keep up with my ‘predictions.’ But let’s be honest—with my luck, I’d end up giving fortunes like, “You will soon order takeout.” They would probably get a better prediction from the fortune cookie that came with their takeout. At this point, the only future I’m certain of is one where I’m writing captions!