Most homes built in the early to mid-1900s have a small shelf built into the wall in the kitchen or hallway. If you live in an old house, this may be the case. If you didn’t think much of this, you might have asked yourself why it was there. Yes, there was a reason for putting it there!
A phone niche is what that small shelf is called. People used landlines to talk to each other before cellphones. That seems like a very long time ago now. A lot of homes were built with just one space for the phone. A lot of them had a small shelf or drawer above or below the phone where you could put address or phone books. It seems so old-fashioned to even think about an address book these days!
Most people no longer have landlines and only use cellphones these days. But you can use this phone niche in different ways if your home has one! For decoration, you could buy an old phone and put it there. If you want, you could even use it. It’s big enough to hold books or other home decor items. You could also put a bunch of small plants in pots in the niche. There are many choices, and it’s up to you!
While I love how convenient new homes are, I also love how old homes have little details that make them unique. The house we live in is very old, so old that the idea of a phone niche was a long time away. Does your house have a place for the phone? If so, I’m very envious!
“People Only Know Me as a Freak,” The Wolf Man Struggles to Find a Job Outside the Circus
Jesús Aceves has hypertrichosis, which makes his hair grow abundantly over his face and back. Because of his condition, he’s also known as The Wolf Man. But he’s tired of this alias and wants to live a normal life.
Meet Jesús Aceves, a 55-year-old man born with a condition called hypertrichosis, which means he has abnormal hair growth over his body, especially his face. Although married with kids, Jesús isn’t fully happy with his living conditions. He says he and his family suffer discrimination. In an interview, one of his kids mentioned, “People call me names, and they even tell their kids not to be my friends.”
He worked in the circus all his life, traveling through several cities. But now, he’s tired of being seen as a freak. As a consequence of years on the road, he’s been known as The Wolf Man.
Back home and not in the circus anymore, he’s facing another challenge: finding a “normal” job. He needs to support his family since his wife works in temporary jobs.
After several failed job interviews, he agreed to try something he had always avoided: shave his face. He relied on his family barber to transform him, even creating eyebrows and lashes.
The experience was difficult since the face is an extremely sensitive body area, but both he and his wife believed that simply by shaving, he would be able to find a job.
Jesús did several interviews, and it’s confident that now he’ll find somewhere to work besides the circus. If this happens, he must shave his face every 2 days.
Although rare, some conditions aren’t impossible to have. Luckily, people find a way to overcome the difficulties a rare condition brings and strive in life. Hannah Tyre, for example, was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, meaning that her bones break very easily. But her love for makeup made her an internet influencer, reaching millions of followers. We hope that, by reaching the mainstream media, people with genetic diseases won’t suffer more discrimination.
Preview photo credit A True Story / Youtube
Leave a Reply