Did I Go Overboard?

I didn't mean to. I was trying to use my waiting time in a productive manner. Reading, after all, is usually quite acceptable. Even in public. But did I do too much? Please, you decide.

I went to Portland this week to present information about Lutheran Blind Mission. Not only does LBM have the world's largest religious lending library of Braille/large print/recorded books, but they also have an Outreach Center in Portland. I was asked to talk about both of these opportunities, and to invite people to invite people to the monthly meals and conversations at the Outreach Center.

My contact person (PK) was on the phone when I arrived, so I introduced myself to a receptionist and took a seat in the lobby. I spent a few minutes reviewing data in my Wonderful Notebook of Information. (It never hurts to have the facts straight before you open your mouth, right?) The gal was still on the phone, but I had plenty of reading material with me.

Out came my Braille magazine. I got in the habit of carrying Braille stuff in my car when my kids were still in school. While I waited for the final bell to ring, I could practice my Braille skills. The only other time I practice is in bed at night, and after about ten minutes all the dots turn to mush. If I want to retain any skill at all, I have to remember to practice. Those synapses get lazy and forget how to fire if they aren't exercised regularly.

As I concentrated on feeling the dots, I stopped paying attention to what was happening around me. Except... I heard part of one whispered conversation as one receptionist told the other that I was there for PK's vision loss support group. Silence. I could feel eyes on me, but I kept reading.

Before I knew it, PK had come out of her office and disappeared to another part of the building. No one introduced us. I think it was assumed that I was a simply a client who would be attending the group. After all, only blind people read Braille by touch! It's likely that neither of the receptionists knew that PK had arranged for a guest speaker at this meeting. It's not that I felt disrespected, but it did seem like assumptions were made once I ceased to make eye contact and began feeling the Braille.

Assumptions. Ouch. I am guilty of making them. It was frustrating to realize that I became the object of assumptions, although I was able to act to change my identity very quickly. All I had to do was close my magazine and stride over to the desk. But there are lots of folks who cannot work so effectively to shake free.

This was an interesting experience of mistaken identity. But I have one nagging question: Did I somehow go too far, so that I insinuated actual participation in the blind community?

Dinner in the Dark, Day Without Sight

In the last two weeks, I've had two experiences with simulated blindness. First was a Dinner in the Dark, an event hosted by a church that's getting ready to open a Blind Mission outreach center in Portland. The second opportunity came when a home school family visited my library during their "special needs week" and happened to check out a Braille item.

See? There I am, in the background, in the spaghetti-colored blouse. (Rufus would have had a heyday cleaning up the floor!) The purpose of a Dinner in the Dark is to show sighted people how inept we can be without sight. It's effective, lemme tell you. Dishing noodles was no fun, but I finally realized that no one could see me so I might as well use my fingers to help.

Actually, eating wasn't the biggest challenge I felt. Rather, it was the disorientation of conversation. All of a sudden, a man's voice right above my shoulder said, "I'm going to take your plate to put the sauce on for you." Oh! Chatting with my neighbor was okay, but I made sure to point my head in her direction so maybe she'd know I was talking to her and not Mr. Deep Voice.

Thinking back, I guess it felt like I was in a bubble. I knew there were lots of people in the room, but I didn't have a sense of where they were. The sighted helpers' footsteps were silent, allowing them to appear and disappear without warning. (Also, the blindfold was over my ears, muffling the sound just a little.) It was kind of spooky. If I'd had more time, I would have been more careful of what I said and when, not knowing if there were other ears listening.

I've had one other dining in the dark experience. Several years ago, during my second conference with Lutheran Blind Mission, I put on a blindfold to go to dinner. Someone loaned me a white cane, and another person guided me through the food line. Again, eating was okay, but conversation was difficult. I could concentrate on my dinner or I could really listen to what was happening. Navigating with the cane was fine, because I knew the hallway well. When a blind friend offered to guide me back to the conference room, I relaxed and let him lead the way. I even trusted him not to walk me into a doorpost!


Back to the present. The mom and three elementary-age kids said no, they didn't have any Braille besides the library book, and no one to help them with it. Thanks to my friend's quick thinking, we came up with a plan for them to come to the library when I got off work on Thursday. I subscribe to a monthly magazine in Braille, and have lots of old copies sitting around the house. I brought one for each of them to use.

We talked about their one-day taste of blindness, and it was interesting to hear their perspectives on this experiment. These kids are confident, self-assured folks, and they approached each day of their "special needs week" with a can-do attitude. One day was spent being mute, another day in wheelchairs, yet another day on crutches or wheelchair, and then came the eye patches and sunglasses. Oh... a funny aside. One of my coworkers offered the family a tour of the library. It didn't dawn on me until much later that the librarian couldn't see their eye bandages because the sunglasses covered them! I'm sure she was not the only person that day who thought they really were blind!

One of the girls realized that she had never seen the room we were using. "I wish I could take my patches off just for a minute so I could see where we are!" That reminded me of when I lost my sense of smell. I said much the same thing, many times, wishing for just one more chance to get a whiff of my sons' heads or a new recipe or a wild rose. In my case, memory will have to serve.

There wasn't time for a full-blown Braille lesson (as if I could teach one anyway), but I had them search in their magazines for a full cell of six dots. That represents the word "for" and is, obviously, pretty common. A page of Braille is about equal to a third of a page of print, and that gave them a better understanding of why their magazines are so bulky. I read a sentence or two for them, using touch only, and did not wow them with my speed.

We discussed some statistics about the blindness community -- 70% unemployment, 18% Braille literacy rate, 60% unmarried, 95% unchurched. Isolation is very common. Towards the end of our time, one of the kids sank into a very deep state of (ahem) contemplation. His breathing slowed enough that one of his sisters noticed and asked him if he was sleeping. "No," he mumbled, sitting up straighter. "Just thinking a thought that needed thinking," or something like that. Hahahaha! The hidden danger of wearing eye patches!

Good opportunities for learning, for thinking outside of our own boxes, for trying new things.

Japanese Braille

One of the photos the guys sent from Japan features *authentic* Japanese Braille. I can read American Braille, so I pored over this particular photo to see what I could decipher.

Braille usually consists of combinations of up to six dots per cell, arranged like a vertical six-pack. There are different degrees of difficulty in Braille. Grade One spells out everything letter by letter. People who read this level only have to know the alphabet and punctuation. Grade Two Braille uses a number of short forms for common words or word parts. For example, "and", "the", "ed", "ar", "ing", and "for" each have their own distinct one-cell short forms. There are other signs to indicate "capital", "numeral" and each bit of punctuation.

So, what did I discover about this photo? The short answer is... nothing. The Japanese short forms are, well, Japanese.

But you get bonus points if you can figure out where they boys took the picture. You know, in general terms. Click on the photo to enlarge.