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WotD: Walk of life
Sherlock Holmes, probably the most famous person who never was, could deduce a person’s walk of life merely by observing them for a few seconds.
A person’s walk of life is their place in society or their occupation.
Some people feel it’s rude to mention another’s walk of life.
He was a great observer of people.
Holmes knew if a person was rich or poor, educated or not, highborn or lowborn, simply by observation.
He could deduce their job, where they were from and even what part of the world they had recently visited.
He always made deducing a person’s walk of life seem like magic.
Unfortunately, his ever-present sidekick, Dr. Watson, could never perfect the technique.
Are you a people watcher?
I don’t mean some weirdo who follows people and takes pictures; I mean a person like Sherlock Holmes who likes to observe people.
It’s a common pastime, you know – people watching.
I’ve lived in many different cities around the Pacific.
Sitting in a cafe was one of my favourite things to do when I had time on my hands.
I enjoyed nursing a coffee and observing people as they went about their daily lives.
Like Dr. Watson, I was never able to deduce a person’s walk of life unless it was fairly obvious, but I always enjoyed trying.
Salespeople were easy to spot because they often carried many samples or a sample briefcase larger than a standard one.
Architects and draftspeople were relatively easy to work with, too, as they often carried long cylindrical tubes containing their drawings with them.
Coffee shops are excellent places to observe people because everyone drinks coffee, and you can find all walks of life in one spot.
It’s quite rare, you know.
There are not many places where you can observe carpenters and bankers lined up together.
Likewise, it’s uncommon to see university students and lawyers queuing for the same thing other than at a coffee shop.
At a coffee shop, you can see all walks of life mixed for a few moments before they leave the shop and separate into their regular groups.
Give it a try the next time you are at a coffee shop, train station or anywhere else where you can sit still while others move around you.
See if you can deduce to which walk of life they belong.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 67.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.