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As a caregiver, I have noticed that MY behavior has a lot to do with how directly people deal with Harold. It makes a certain amount of sense that people feel less successful communicating with a person who speaks quietly and hesitatingly, and does not have very responsive facial expressions. So if I'm standing there attentive and engaged in the transaction, that's where their focus will gravitate. So in a restaurant I don't make eye contact with the host, and that tips them off they should greet Harold, not me. At a sales counter I hang back until it's time to pay or unless Harold asks me for help, and at the doctor's I sit really close to Harold so the doctor asks questions and makes suggestions to the pair of us together. If I sit across the room from Harold and the doctor has to move his head around to address us separately, sooner or later he stops talking to Harold and talks to me instead. I think this is not meanness, insensitivity or discrimination: it's just that humans are hard-wired to prefer talking to people who (appear to be) interested in what they're saying. Barbara Baichtal cg Harold (58/20)