Thoughts on always being a teacher on blindness.

Thoughts on always being a teacher on blindness. 

 

  Regarding the teacher thing, this is not something we have any control over. 

It is not something we turn on or off when we feel like it.  Unless you spend your life in a closet. 

Take the blind beggar who influenced my 5 year old brain.  He sat on the street corner playing a horrid accordion, wearing wrinkled, soiled, baggy old clothes and a shapeless hat.  He rolled his yellow stained eyes up  in his head and opened his mouth, looking skyward.  It was only years later that I learned that this man probably saw better than I did. 

I was told at the time that he was blind and had to make his living by begging.  Period!  Later, I watched the blind man in the Seattle Post Office putting out his magazines and papers for sale.  He also tipped his head up and let his mouth hang open.  Years later we would become good friends, but to a young boy he taught me a great deal a bout why I did not want to be blind. 

Why do we keep thinking that teaching is some sort of conscious act on our part?  It is going on at this very moment.  Today I go for my physical therapy and then Cathy and I will head over to the Logger's Landing for lunch.  At the very moment I enter the restaurant I am looked at by nearly everyone there.  In that split second, before they turn their attention back to their own business, I have taught them something about being a blind man.  Depending on what baggage they already have, some will see me as "that good looking white haired man who is always cheerful", or "that poor old man who has to have that sweet, kind lady always holding his hand".  I become a piece of what they think they know about blind people.  Sure, I can influence what they believe.  If I stumble over a chair that was not pushed in,they may add, "clumsy"  to their image.  Or if I get up during lunch and wander down to the men's room someone might marvel at how "that blind man is so amazing, walking all by himself".  But my point is that just by being, I am the teacher.  Knowing that, I do my best each time I am taken out for public viewing, to look and act my very, very best. 

I'll post an article that I wrote for the WCB Newsline. 

 

Curious Carl