Tom's responses
Tom said......
Before I respond to messages individually I want to thank all of you for
reading my story. I sincerely appreciate all of your kind comments and
the excellent observations you have made. I am not what anyone could really call a "writer" by any stretch of the imagination but I do enjoy doing a little bit of writing from time to time. One of the most important things that can happen for a writer is to receive input from readers and I think that input can be extremely valuable when it comes from outside of one's culture as has been the case with the comments I have gotten from all of you.
I will try and respond to each of your comments. I had intended to do so much earlier in the semester but have had computer problems which have not been fixed to this very day so I am submitting my comments by e-mail. I apologize for creating extra work for someone by having to do things this way. If I do not respond to a particular comment that someone has made it is because I think I have answered the question elsewhere. Hopefully some of what I have to say will be worth both a little extra work for someone as well as your time to read. If any of you wish to e-mail me privately I would be glad to do so at g_brennantg@titan.sfasu.edu
which is my university e-mail address.
posted by 馬自美 Mei @ 11:46 PM
43 comments
43 Comments:
To Mei Ma:
I want to thank you for setting up this blog over my story.
As I have read comments that have been made I have noticed that most of you have commented on my doing things as a blind person. I have always been blind so have no idea what it is like to be sighted. I suspect that things are far harder on a person who becomes blinded in later life. I know that I am often frustrated because I cannot just hop in a car or on a bike and just go where I please. It is also frustrating not to be able to comfortably travel to places I've never visited when I am by myself. I do know these sorts of things as frustrations just as having to have someone read me labels in a store to find what I want is frustrating. It is, however, all I've ever known so isn't quite as devastating as it might seem.
When a person is blind they usually still have their other senses including taste, smell, and touch. Even your friends will become upset if you want to smell or taste them and also will be uncomfortable with being touched past a certain point. This is even more true of strangers so the senses blind people have must be used a little differently than those of sighted people. While hearing can pretty much be used anywhere it is not directional like eyes in that you can't really aim your ears or focus with them. You can look at people but it is usually not acceptable to touch or smell them so there are limitations but they are, I suppose, only as serious as one makes them.
Remember that in a story the author is presenting something for you
to read and when writing about yourself that something may not be either a complete picture or may be totally untrue. That is also the case with
things which you read on the internet. I have said that I wrote this story and that I am Tom Brennan but that need not be true. I honestly have tried to present myself in a realistic way in the story but remember that I was quite excited about that particular date and was being on my best behavior.
To Grace Yen:
Jane and I were friends before the dinner in my story but I wanted
very much to keep it that way and perhaps to become better friends.
It is interesting that you bring up learning geometry because I did
terribly at it in high school. Generally it is necessary for a blind person to either have a model or a real object to work with to learn three-dimensional structures. An example of this was the first time I saw the moon rover that the U.S. used during our moon landings. I was at our space center in Houston, Texas and was allowed to actually climb around on a rover. I had no idea that it looked anything like it did and all the descriptive stuff on the television and radio had really given me no true idea of the open framework of it or of its odd tires which are actually made of piano wire.
To Annie Chan:
I think that often what blind people can't do is more of a reflection of what sighted people think they can do than it is of their actual capabilities. There are certainly things that a blind person cannot do (I would probably be pretty uncomfortable with a blind surgeon) but most problems that blind people have are either caused by sighted people's expectations for them or by having to deal with things in a sighted world such as street signs which blind people cannot see, product labels which we cannot read, papers we cannot fill out without sighted help, etc. Technology is overcoming many problems such as reading books or doing surgery and some things which are problems today may not be tomorrow. Unfortunately that doesn't make things like trying to find a friend in a large group of people any less frustrating.
One of my early degrees is in social work so I have a slightly altered way of thinking about it. However, I believe that the greatest problem for the blind in the U.S. is that if they ever become a part of the "blindness system" either through rehabilitation agencies or through social service agencies it is almost impossible to get out of the system. A large part of that problem has to do with the economics of things and is probably more than is appropriate for this blog but it being difficult to impossible to get free of the social system set up for blind people is probably the biggest problem we face.
When I started in college I either had to eat out all the time, get
friends to cook for me, pay to eat at the university, or do my own cooking. As a poor student I decided that I should just learn to cook. Believe me when I tell you that I am no great cook. My best friend is the microwave.
It usually takes me only a couple times of using a particular gadget for cooking to get used to it. Its really not much different than for a sighted person. Knowing when food is not well cooked or has gone bad is similar to what sighted folks do. You can tell a lot by smell, taste, and feel. If your food is cold and you were trying to cook it you can be pretty sure you have not cooked it enough. If it smells funky you probably need to trash it. There are some foods where it is difficult to tell, though. Cheese is a good example. When it is moldy it is often difficult to tell and some cheese is so nasty anyway that mold could only improve it.
I enjoyed reading the book Helen Keller as well as watching the movie. I think that the thing that impressed me most is blind people using sign language. I am going deaf and signing is something that I think will be a serious problem for me.
I am not married and live alone. That makes it easy for me to know
about my house etc. because there's nobody except my puppy (Shae) to move things around on me. When I've had people around who did move things it has been frustrating and sometimes people just don't understand but most people do try not to move things on me. A blind person has to keep a map in his head of where everything in his world is located. If someone moves something and I go to pick it up and its gone it no longer exists in my head. I have to physically find it again to get it back in my world and whether it has been moved a couple inches or to another room doesn't matter because its still just as gone until I find it. Its not quite like for sighted people who just look around for it and who can constantly update their map of the world. As an aside, this map is called a cognitive map.
Employment is a serious problem for blind people. In the U.S. about 70% (seventy per cent) of blind people are unemployed. When I was in graduate school my mentor and I decided that it would be best for me to be in private practice and that has proven to be the case. About 75% of the jobs I've applied for went along swimmingly until the people found out that I was blind. Self employment avoids having to deal with being hired.
I am actually a shy person and tend to be uncomfortable around groups of people. My progressive hearing loss has made this worse since it is sometimes difficult for me to hear people in a group. I tend to have only a few close friends because of that and am okay with that.
I assure you that I have not been offended by anything any of you
have asked. Remember that if you ask a handicapped person a reasonable
question and they become upset the problem is with them and not with you. I really enjoy talking to young children because they're pretty free about asking exactly what they want to know. As we get older we get trained out of that so tend to be uncomfortable sometimes talking to handicapped people but the converse is also true that that same training sometimes makes handicapped people uncomfortable talking to "normal" people.
To Hui-Chun Hsu:
I hope you get the chance to try some hot apple pie with cheese on
top. It is truly one of the great things in life.
Learning anatomy is probably more difficult in some ways for blind
people than for sighted people. We (blind people) cannot use books
which is really an inconvenience more than anything else. It requires
the use of models for many things whether you buy those models or your
friends get them for you. It also requires the use of your friends and
anyone else you can get to let you look at them whether its for the
bones in the skull, the bones of the hands, the organs in the abdomen
which can be palpated, or whatever. Obviously you can't touch someone's
heart or brain or spinal cord so for the serious anatomy
student a cadaver lab is pretty essential. Unfortunately such labs are
hard to come by and for reasons of wear and tear of the cadavers in the
lab touching is sometimes not encouraged, especially because it is
sometimes necessary to dissect out organs to more of a degree than would
be necessary for a visual examination if you need to feel those organs.
When I wrote this story it actually didn't take very long. I am
one of those people who pretty much puts an idea together in my head,
whether for a story or a technical paper, and writes it down. As I
thought through the story I realized that I very much wanted to convey
some of my feelings about my date with Jane and the oddness and humor of
the whole situation. I think what any writer really wants, especially
when writing about one's self, is for the reader to be able to get
inside the writer's skin and feel some of what was going on. When that
happens then the story is well written even if the writing itself is not
perfect.
To Vivid Cheng:
It is seldom spoken of but sometimes blind people feel sorry for
sighted people because of what they (the sighted) miss. It is not that
blind people have any special abilities for the most part but rather
that we simply attend more to the environment than sighted people.
Since about 80% of what comes in to the sighted person's brain is visual
and 0% is visual for blind people there has to be some way to make up
the difference. Obviously I can't see a friend 100 meters away from me
but I often know a friend's smell and know if they're in a room or have
been there recently. By smell I mean the person's actual smell rather
than the smell of soap or perfume although these can also help to
identify people.
There is a saying that you can do anything you set your mind to.
It is largely true but not completely. No matter how much I think about
it my prosthetic eyes will never enable me to see but I can learn to
make things like baked Alaska or to ride a bicycle just as sighted
people can learn to attend to senses other than vision and discover
seemingly new things in their worlds.
To Chun-Yi Fang:
I am rather fortunate in that I have been able to buy lots of
gadgets to help around my home. Obviously I have a computer (actually
several). They use speech synthesizers. I have talking clocks, cutting
guides to help me cut meat and other foods straight, talking scales both
for people and for use in the kitchen, talking thermometers both for
meat temperature and ambient temperature, a talking color detector which
can tell me what color things are, light detectors which tell me when
lights are on whether those be room lights or the little lights on
digital displays, magnetic strips which can be brailled and then stuck
on canned foods so they can be easily reused, a braille labeling machine
for labeling tape, and lots of other gadgets. Much of this has only
become available in the past fifteen years and prices have come way
down in that time although some things are quite expensive. For
example, my color detector was about $85 U.S. but the screen access
program I use with Windows is about $1400. Screen access programs allow
you to read what is actually on the monitor screen.
Other than the sun, I can check a talking clock or talking or
braille watch for the time to tell day from night. I can also use a
light probe. Checking my talking outdoor thermometer also often gives me
a pretty good idea. Of course, the world is much busier during the day
so I can usually tell by outdoor sounds. I thought my puppy, Shae,
would help with that but she's used to my crazy sleeping schedules so I
can't depend on being able to tell from how she acts. The radio is also
another option since night programming is often different from
programming during the day. I am an amateur radio operator so can also
always tell by which frequency bands are active whether its day or
night. TV shows are also a good indication.
To Uris Lin:
An odd thing, if you really think about it, is that as a sighted
person you can be "blind" for awhile but as a blind person I can't be
"sighted" for awhile. I think it would be an interesting experience but
I'm not sure that I'd want to be that way permanently.
Many blind people have very limited views of the world simply
because they don't have the opportunity to touch things. A number of
years ago I was doing post graduate work in psychology which involved a
research project in which I had to "wire up" a large number of people.
For electrophysiological measures I was placing electrodes on their
foreheads, arms, fingers, legs, chests, necks, and sometimes feet.
There were no shocks involved, just reading muscle reactions much as you
would read tv signals with an antenna. It was truly an eye opening
experience to see the kinds of clothing and hair styles both the males
and females were wearing. Had it not been for having to test that fifty
or so people I would have had no idea because blind people don't simply
see the people around them. If I start wanting to touch everyone who
walks past on the street it won't be long before I am in big trouble and
it will be very lucky for me if the police don't cart me off.
I do not have a dog guide as I would just want to make a pet out of
it. I love dogs so I use a white cane.
Class exercises such as you did are great learning tools and they
teach you as much about trust as they do being blind. Whenever I go
somewhere with a sighted guide I have to trust that person. I have to
trust that directions sighted people give me are correct because
figuring out where I went wrong is more difficult for me after the fact.
All blind people have days when they bump in to things. I was
talking with my old high school sweetheart yesterday. She is blind and
we were talking about those days when it just seems that you're going to
bump in to everything. Its blind people's version of a bad hair day.
No matter how long you've been blind or no matter how good a traveler
you are you'll just have those days.
To Judy Huang:
As I read your comment about my being able to remember all this
stuff I was amused for two reasons. First, I have talked to Jane about
this and she remembers things pretty much as I do but there's really no
way to check on all of this for accuracy. Second, I took a bit of
literary license with this and actually combined two settings. The
story is true but to make the telling less complicated I have collapsed
two settings in to one for the story. That allowed me to tell a less
complicated story staying more with entertainment rather than having to
go through a complicated explanation of the actual house where this took
place. Once in awhile an author can make such a change to a story
without having to tamper with the facts of the story in so far as the
people's thoughts and actions are concerned.
To Rico:
More and more blind people these days seem to have dog guides in
the U.S. Sometimes I feel a bit left out for not having one but there
is a lot of responsibility in having one and I don't think I would be
out enough to get it sufficient exercise every day.
I love sea food and would really like to visit your part of the
world. I have lived in Europe but have never visited Asia or any of the
Pacific islands although I've always wanted to. I had begun taking
courses in anthropology and was thinking about getting to go to some
interesting places for field work but that hasn't worked out and I'm not
taking any anthropology just now. Perhaps one day...
Your transmitter transmits on 2 meters (144-148mHz and 70
centimeters (430-450mHz. These are amateur radio bands in pretty much
all countries. If you enjoy listening perhaps you would also enjoy
talking. If you already have the radio it might be worth getting a
license. Listening is pretty much legal anywhere except for some
nonsense in the U.S. now that says you're not supposed to own a radio
which can receive cell phone frequencies, satellite unless you pay for
it, etc. Some countries have laws against anyone owning radios but in
general listening is free and can be really interesting.
To Julie Lin:
Just as for sighted people, blind people need rides. If you're
sighted, nobody thinks anything of it but if you're blind it suddenly
becomes a big deal. Even for those who don't own cars, at least in the
U.S., people tend to feel sorry for them. Anyone who can't drive for
whatever reason has hastles associated with getting around. It is
frustrating for me to have to ask for a ride for something as simple as
wanting ice cream. It takes me too long to walk back from the store so
I need a ride. The same is true of long distances or if I have to get
something heavy. I suppose part of it is that I know that even when a
friend gives me a ride I can never return that particular favor.
I've never done your cousin's fish trick but I have forgotten
myself and done a lecture at a family dinner on which tendons were where
on a chicken and carefully took apart my steak to demonstrate fasha,
muscle striation, marrow canals in bones, etc. That is definitely not a
way to impress your dinner companions! Neither is drawing organs in
your mashed potatoes.
To Victor:
Dating is an interesting thing. To some extent touching and
closeness are more permitted on a date and certainly a blind person has
the chance to touch his date at least as a sighted guide. You do have
to depend upon people's voice, their intelligence, smell, etc. and I do
tend to prefer girls with nice voices. I admit that I do have physical
preferences in females but I think that, for the most part, physical
appearance is not nearly so important for most blind people.
Unfortunately some blind people are brainwashed by sighted people and
become obsessed about things like the color of clothes or hair, exactly
how their date looks, etc. which are things that can often not be told
by means any but visual. I would much rather date or have friends for
who those people are rather than what they look like. It is
all a part of the dating process and you have to be able to be
comfortable with it in your own culture. In the U.S. we don't have
openly arranged marriage or anything similar but it does go on,
particularly in wealthy families. I have never had to deal with
anything like that but there are social pressures to conform to what
your group thinks appropriate and even for blind folks the pressures
from sighted people can sometimes make a difference. Generally I'd
rather just date and have friends for who the person is and
leave it at that.
To Jolene:
Messy eating is always a concern for blind people with any amount
of social awareness. Some blind folks seem not to have any idea of
what's going on but eating can be a big deal. For example, I know of no
way for a blind person to successfully handle cutting fish which still
contains the bones without using hands. Even cutting meat such as steak
can be quite a challenge. Of course, there are those salads when one
gigantic leaf of lettuce is what constitutes the salad. In general, I
just don't worry about it too much. If eating becomes a problem the
relationship was probably never meant to be. I even know sighted girls
who absolutely refuse to eat on the first or second date because they
don't want to eat in front of a guy they're trying to impress. This
seems to me to be backward because I always thought food was for enjoyment.
Many older people have never learned the difference in love and
need. Perhaps there is really no way to separate them because where one
exists the other will be there. I think you can have need without love
but not love without need. A part of loving someone is needing them. I
may need for a friend to take me to the bank but that need does not mean
that I love them. You may need to do this class assignment but that does
not mean that you love either Dr. Chung or me. I think that, in truth,
love is pretty much a little of everything and if the person that you
love loves you back you can share that love and it doesn't get any
better than that.
To Sarah:
If you're blind you really don't have a choice about how you're
going to live. Being blind is like being Mexican or left handed or in a
wheel chair or living in the U.S. or whatever; its what you have so you
just make the best of what you have and go from there.
Your glass door analogy is excellent and very true. I sometimes
forget about windows because when they're closed to me they're closed.
Its hard for me to imagine being able to see through a closed window so
I sometimes forget curtains just as sighted people forget that if the
door is left open you can hear conversations and you can hear very well
through walls.
To Lydie:
I had three aims with the medical terms I used in the story. I
didn't want to use too many of them but I wanted to show how I was
thinking and I wanted all of that to be a little amusing. I wanted
there to be just enough terminology that most people would not be too
familiar with it to make the points. If I had used basic terms like
hand, foot, heart, brain, etc. I think it would have not been quite so
funny, at least not to me.
To Annien Chang:
It is important to remember that the worlds of blind people are more like those of sighted people than different. We all live in the same places, eat
the same foods, smell the same smells, etc. Blindness is a real difference but it is not what makes a person; you who you are, not the "disability" you have. Blind people know the world through senses other than their eyes so they do have self images and know what they look like to themselves. There is social expectation in every society for what is normal, pretty, ugly, fat, thin, tall, short, and such and blind people's social constructs are similar but obviously blindness will cause some differences. I may touch some clothing that a person is wearing and not like it because of its feel and how it seems to fit the person while a sighted person may think its really "cool" and the latest thing. However, I may really like some old piece of clothing
because it has been worn until it has become all soft and faded simply because it feels nice. A sighted person may say that it looks trashy. This is called your point of reference or frame of reference. Mine is as a blind person and I am assuming that all of you have a sighted frame of reference but it is still of the same world. I suspect very strongly that cultural differences between you and I would be far more of a potential problem than that of my blindness were we to meet.
I do still have that hutch in my dining room. It still contains Jane and Larry. I do have people sit so they are not facing it even though the doors are no longer clear glass. However, and this was done by the sighted designer, there is a mirror right below the hutch cabinet so whomever is sitting across from it gets to watch herself eat which seems to be distressing to many folks.
One of the reasons that I decided to make dinner for Jane is that if I was at home I knew exactly where everything was and had pretty much complete control over things. In its own way this got rid of more stress for me than fixing the dinner and cleaning the house created.
To Joelle:
You are so right that love does make you "stupid" but it also makes you happy to be "stupid", or at least it did me.
To Santa:
It is not only true of blind people but of any outside group that we tend not to understand them. Part of that is simple ignorance of their ways but part of it is prejudice, our own expectations for others, or even sometimes stupidity and a lack of caring. It is unfortunate but its a part of the world we all live in.
You only say that me cooking is awesome because you have not tasted the result.
I think sometimes we all tend to worry too much about those we see as inferior or handicapped in some way when all they usually want is to be like everyone else. Usually this is simply well meant help or feelings and getting information about the person whether they are blind or purple or only speak Hungarian is all that is needed to set things on a smoother course for everyone.
To Nancy:
What you've said about blind and sighted people is very true in terms of their being uncomfortable with one another. I think the biggest reason for uncomfortableness is that it makes a blind person uncomfortable when they know a sighted person is uncomfortable around them. Its that old being different thing.
To Yuru:
As your uncle has nicely demonstrated, one of the most important things for a blind adult (or anyone else for that matter) is to feel useful. In most cultures that means having a job. Nobody likes to feel unimportant or unneeded and that is why rehabilitation is often such an important part of the training of "handicapped" people.
To Ginashiao:
I do envy people being able to study from pictures in books. It is
sometimes extremely inconvenient to have to find a human model for study, especially when one is studying late at night.
To Jackie Chan:
I have given some thought to writing a story about dating a blind girl. I have recently seen my high school sweetheart and we find that we still love each other. Perhaps there's a story in that somewhere.
I appreciate your wanting to read more of my stories. I have a batch of them on my web site at:
http://titan.sfasu.edu/~g_brennantg/stories.html
To Megan:
Falling in love is one of those things that doesn't require sight. It amuses me that I'm always hearing about people getting together through the internet and this was happening before there were cameras and picture swaps being used. It is all just a part of loving someone for who they are rather than how they look.
You might want to try a little exercise. Get a movie that you have not seen on video tape or dvd and watch it blindfolded. Then go back and watch it with your eyes and see how you perceive it differently. When you are blindfolded you can have a sighted friend along to tell you about things if you wish. I suggest a short movie rather than something long like Roots.
I don't do MSN messaging or ICQ but in e-mails and such I'll tell someone what I physically look like (height weight, eye color, etc.) if they ask and just leave the rest to them.
Desperation is a good motivation for learning to cook. As I said
in a previous post, it was that or go out and I couldn't afford going out all the time.
To Julia Lin:
Actually, although I did offer to clean and such, especially when girls fed me, I think I was much more popular for giving rubs. I used to be a trainer in high school and massage got me a lot of free meals when I was in college.
To Iris:
My speech-language-pathology degree was actually a bit of an accident. I needed some hearing tests done for a post graduate psychology project I was doing and couldn't get anyone willing to do 200 of them. My solution was to take an audiology course so I could do the tests myself. I really liked the professor and took all of his courses and then found that I had nearly
finished a graduate degree so just went ahead and finished it up.
There is new research that says that blind people actually do develop some auditory abilities that sighted people don't have because they use the part of the brain normally used for vision to help process sound. This is only really true of congenitally blind (those born blind) people. For the most part, its just that if you can't see something you have to pay more attention to your other senses.
To Kerry Huang:
There are a very few braille books available in anatomy but very few. What ones there are are good for text but the pictures can only be
2-dimensional to be of any use. Three-dimensional pictures are much too
confusing to feel. As a simple example imagine a picture of a box just
showing four sides. Now imagine that picture as a cube showing three
dimensions. If you think about feeling all those lines it certainly does not feel like a cube.
In addition to being expensive, braille books are bulky and reading
braille is much slower than reading print for most people.
I suppose I have had to study harder than a lot of people but it has always come pretty easily for me. I think I'd have been pretty frustrated otherwise.
Chris Liao
It is interesting that you have read my Christmas story. It is
about my father's death. My mother passed away last August and I am
considering writing a story about some strange things that happened then.
I think the memory is perhaps still a bit too fresh but I will probably
write one about it soon.
Valen
Actually, I suspect that things working out as well as they did with Jane
was more to her credit than mine. Then again, sometimes people just click and
we seem to have done that. Jane and I are no longer really close but I think
both of us enjoyed that time of our lives. Then again, they say that college
is the best time of your life and there is probably some truth to that.
Stephanie
I'm pretty much one of those people who doesn't do a job unless I like
it. As I have said before, my speech pathology background was a bit of an
accident. I also got certified in audiology and really enjoy that. I prefer
diagnostics in either audiology or speech pathology. I have also tuned and
repaired pianos since high school where I took courses in it and that's what's
paid for my degrees. I used to do a little computer programming which I
picked up by having to modify programs to make them work with a speech
synthesizer.
To avoid hastles which I have previously discussed I have always been
self employed both in speech and hearing as well as piano work. That way when
I am discriminated against I can just go elsewhere to work.
We would like to think it not the case but people who are not "wasps"
tend
to get poorer jobs and poorer pay. That is partly but not completely an
education issue. It is probably nowhere near the problem for us as it is in
some countries but discrimination because of race does exist.
I don't think the payment the handicapped receive if they can get in to
the main work force is quite as good as that received by the sighted but it is
difficult to get in to the work force. Those in sheltered workshops and
similar environments do receive very poor pay.
When I was in school I used a lot of readers and recorded books. My
biggest source for recorded books was a company called Recording For The Blind
(RFB) which recorded textbooks for the blind. Today they are called RFB&D
(Recording For The Blind And Dyslexic).
Probably the single most important person in my school career is Dr.
Bernard-thomas Hartman who was my mentor in graduate school and who helped me
through my clinical internships. I also had an excellent professor named
Frances Freeman who was very helpful to me doing post graduate speech and
hearing work. I also had a third grade teacher named Mrs. Kinny or Kenny or
something like that who really taught me to enjoy learning and to learn for
myself.
For all practical purposes I was born blind. I had a condition which was
called retrolental fibroplasia (rlf) which is now called retinopathy of
prematurity (rop) in which the retina of the eye is destroyed for some reason.
The retina is the inner coat of the eye that actually picks up light. They
know that I was totally blind before I was six months old. When I was 23 I
had my eyes both removed because of severe infection problems and other
problems with the eyes that could not be cured. They didn't work so getting
them out was only a psychological trauma for me. Now I have prosthetic eyes
which are made of plastic. They are only cosmetic since a replacement for the
eye is not possible with our present technology. I wrote a story about
having my eyes removed called Yes, But Doctor...??? which is on my web
site.
James
While it is true that not many blind people learn anatomy it is also true
that not many sighted people learn it either. It is probably not a very
popular subject for most people.
Being powerless is a good description of the plight of many handicapped
people.
Michaeljing
I have not seen the movie Ray but I really enjoy his music. The idea
of his mother helping him is a good reminder for all of us that there is
usually someone in our lives who helps us grow up. It was my mother for me
and is for many people. Blind or not, none of us could make it without
someone along the way to keep us going when the going was rough.
Sebastian Hou
I must admit that the events of my story are much funnier to me after the
fact. At the time all this happened I was truly frantic and thought the whole
world revolved on how well I managed things. I think Jane would have been
fine with just about anything I did.
I believe that you are correct in that love really is the best motivation
for people. Certainly greed or hate are high motivations but love seems to be
the one potentially to be the one to do the most good and to produce truly
lasting results.
Henry Chiau
When I was growing up kids did sometimes make fun of me. Kids can be
cruel although I'm not sure that they really see it as cruel. I remember when
I was four or five being outside in the playground one day and some older kids
asking me if I wanted some candy. Of course, I did but what I got was a
mouthful of dirt. That sort of thing didn't happen very often but I suppose
that was the first time that I realized that you have to have a care about
whom you trust.
I didn't have nearly as difficult a childhood as Helen Keller because I
had normal hearing. My father was in the military so I lived in lots of
different places which allowed me to see the world from more than the pages of
a book. My parents encouraged me and I was pretty much expected to do
whatever sighted kids did. My sister and I both had horses, I rode in rodeos,
rode bikes, roller skated, climbed trees, was on track team in school, and
whatever else came along. During my years in Boy Scouts I think I taught
others a bit about blind people. At least they knew I could hike or swim with
them and could earn awards like they could. In general I'd have to say that I
had lots of opportunities as a child and they definitely enriched my life.
Jenny Yang
When she started seeing all those models of Larry and Jane's parts I'm
not sure that Jane was terrified so much as she was surprised and grossed out.
To this day I still put things in odd places. Since its just Shae and me
living in this house I sometimes forget. Just yesterday, for example, a
friend came by and I had forgotten to take a pathology text I'm reading off
the table. It was laying open to a page showing a man's head who had been
shot. Because it is a medical text it was pretty graphic. It was no big deal
for me and I had just forgotten about it but my friend wasn't too happy at
seeing it. Sometimes its just little silly stuff like leaving a sack of puppy
food in the middle of my dining room table like some sort of strange center
piece or leaving some dirty pot on the stove when I wash dishes because I
Forgot it was there.
Leila Chen
My daily life is, fortunately, not usually quite as frantic as this
story. I don't think I could handle being that wound up all the time.
Claire
I did eventually finish all those drinks but apparently I never learn.
When Dee (the high school sweetheart I've spoken of) came over a couple weeks
ago I got a lot of different kinds of drinks and I'll be at least months in
finishing them off. I also got almost every kind of food I could remember
her liking which has the advantage that I won't have to go to the store for
awhile. This was for a single afternoon's visit.
I don't think that being blind is particularly frightening to me since
its all that I've ever known but it is sometimes pretty frustrating.
I'm not sure if blind people appreciate their lives more or just
differently. I would probably be willing to say that they at least do tend
more often to stop and "smell the flowers".
Grace Yang
We have one of those special stop lights at one corner in town. The ones
in the U.S. usually make a chirping or beeping sound rather than click. I
agree that while those lights are a nice idea and can be very convenient it
almost seems silly because they are not available in most places. People say
that you have to start somewhere and I suppose that is true but you still have
to wonder when things like those lights are the exception rather than the
rule. They're a little like braille on elevator buttons; that's a great idea
but most of those buttons are set so low that you have to get down on your
knees to read them and you also have to have a free hand which isn't always
possible if you're using your cane and carrying something.
Amanda
One problem that the blind have is isolation. This is a problem in
differing degrees for different people in differing circumstances but
blindness, deafness, or whatever does cause some isolation. Where you find
clumps of blind people together this isolation from sighted folks is even
more pronounced because the blind people will tend to identify with
themselves. That has some to do with marriage and dating issues but more to
the point are social expectations and people's ignorance about blindness.
Sometimes even blind people forget that they are just people too and blindness
just happens to be a part of who they are not actually the total of who they
are.
Jason
There are many people in the world who never get to fall in love and even
if you only love once and you feel emotional responses to other people you are
far luckier than those who go through life feeling nothing and never caring
about others. Love is one of those things that you really can't look for but
when you find it it will be at a most unexpected time and perhaps from a most
unexpected source.
Shelley
Yes, I really do like music. I tune and repair pianos and have built a
few instruments such as guitars, kolimbas (African thumb pianos), lutes, and
banjos. I have a fair sized record/cd/cassette music collection and play
guitar and a few other stringed instruments. I think that losing music is
being the worst part of losing my hearing.
Ben Dai
If this little story motivates you to go out and do something nice for
your girl friend, I applaud you. Remember, though, don't tell her where you
got the idea; let her think it came from you!
Lauria
I always wonder about it when students discuss an author's story. I can
remember when I took english classes in high school and college wondering if
that's really what the author meant when our teachers would tell us what some
story meant. When I wrote You Might Be A Nerd If I really hadn't consciously
thought of the idea of the whole house cleaning thing being like preparation
for a test but it really is. When I wrote the story I just had in mind being
a nerd who studied stuff most people couldn't care less about. Thank you for
the bit of analysis as it makes me feel like a real author.
You're right in that anyone, regardless of disability or whatever, just
wants to be one of the guys. This Sunday (May 8) is Mother's Day in the U.S.
It is a day each year when we honor our mothers and remember to thank them.
Our Father's Day is at the beginning of June. Even though these are special
days of recognition for them, even moms and dads just want to be "one of the
guys" just like blind people or any other people.
Dolly Huang
Many students and others that I know never catch on to the idea that
exaggerated body movement when signing is the same as modulation in speech.
Once you figure that out you can realize that many deaf people are very lively
and animated despite the fact that they often seem depressed and quiet.
Dear Mr. Brennan,
Though it's a bit too late, I thank you for your warm reply. With regard to the moon rover you mentioned, I was so surprised that you were allowed to climb around on it. I think the people in our space center would never be so thoughtful. However,I hope the TV programs make some adjustments and ask blind folks for advice. Therefore, you guys would probably get a better understanding for three-dimensional structures through TV.
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