Small person’s adaptations

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Many pieces of equipment and machinery I find are designed for people taller and generally bigger than me. Even something as simple as a CD case is hard to open because they’re designed for people with bigger hands! So it wasn’t really a surprise that the lighting set-up is a bit on the large side for me. The spotlight is on a tall tripod and the handles are just above my shoulder height. Then we each have a headset, one of those that goes over just one ear and on the other side there’s a sort of bar that is meant to go just above your other ear to hold the thing in place. Except I obviously have a small head as well which means that when I put the thing on with the earphone in place the bar comes exactly in the middle of my other ear, even when I’ve adjusted the headband part as small as it will go. Or if I twizzle it a bit I can put the bar below my ear on one side and have the earphone sort of slightly above the other ear, but that isn’t very satisfactory. If you’ve ever had anything pressed on your ear for a while you will know this can get decidedly uncomfortable if not downright painful. And holding your arms up high also gets uncomfortable after quite a short while. So after the first show I went home and looked around to see what I could find as an easy temporary fix. I found some strips of foam that I attached to the headset with cable ties to make it comfortable. Then I thought of the ‘duckboard’ style bathmat we use for getting out of the shower, so I borrowed that. It wasn’t really high enough and I was afraid that if I accidentally stood on the very edge it would flap up and down again, making a loud noise on our scaffolding platform, but my partner went and rummaged around in the garage and found a biggish piece of leftover carpet underlay which we folded up to just the right size. That solved both problems at once! Both of those adaptations made all the difference. Got through the next shows with no problems at all. And in case you’re wondering, the other spotlight operator is a good few inches taller than me with a bigger head and a generous amount of curly hair as padding as well, so he doesn’t have any problems! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2024.