The Unseemliness of Empty-Headedness

Some time ago, I met a gentleman at a convention who is visually impaired. He wears normal glasses and travels with a working dog. I have found him to be quite pleasant, even though I’ve just barely met him. I saw him the other day on the bus and learned that he is in fact a co-worker, as he works for the same employer in a different office.

After work today I boarded the bus to go to gym, as I usually do three times every week. I sat near the front of the bus where usually not many others choose to sit, although today I was joined by two women. They spoke to each very quietly and only shared fleeting bits of conversion. Just before the bus left the terminal, my visually impaired co-worker made his way onto the bus.

Now, I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with an ad series that the Canadian National Institute for the Blind has been playing on television lately, but if you are not, now is the time for you to learn. One ad in particular is relevant to my story. The ad portrays a gentleman standing at a street corner with dark shaded glasses and a white cane. He is waiting for the light to change and the pedestrian walking signal to allow him to cross the street safely. As he is standing waiting there, two teenaged boys arrive at the same street corner to wait for the same light to change. One of them turns to the “blind” man and, just for ‘fun’, decides to wave his heads mockingly in front of the visually impaired man’s face. After this first boy has satisfied his own perverse appetite for jocularity and turns away from the visually impaired man, the aforementioned man reacts in his own way. He shifts his cane so that it is held in place between his arm and body so that he may mimic the motions of the teenaged boy behind the boy’s back.

The point of the ad, just in case you haven’t caught it already, is not to assume that all people who look to be legally blind are. In fact, the script across the television screen at the end of the ad reads “9 out of 10 Canadians that the CNIB helps have some vision”. A message that speaks loud and clear to many who have a functioning brain …

Back to the bus today – these two woman see this man board the bus with his dog and realize very quickly that is visually impaired. They both scooch down one seat so that this man can sit on the seat nearest the front. He puts his hand out to feel for the actual seat. As he does this, the closest of the two women reaches her hand out to grab his and pulls it towards the seat, jerking the man a little off balance. Not a word was spoken by this woman mind you – she just grabbed and pulled. But wait, there’s more.

As my friend found his seat and settled in, his dog also re-arranged himself on the floor of the bus. When his dog finally settled, the woman seated nearest to this man started petting the dog. Perturbed a little too much to sit quietly while this continued, the man turned to her and subtly commented, “He’s a working dog”, to which the woman simply responded, “yeah” as if she stopped just short of, “so what?”. And now, for the finale.

Once the bus headed out on its route, this gentleman reached into his plastic bag containing various newspapers and sorted through them to take out his sudoku puzzle. As he adjusted his glasses and took out his pen, I couldn’t help but notice the women’s reactions. They both shot each other looks of shock, frustration, and of incredulity. They must have thought, “how could this man who would not have found his seat on the bus if it had not been for Saint (us) do a sudoku puzzle?”. One of them even started laughing and kept doing so, on-and-off until several stops after the man got off the bus.

I was furious! I was livid with their conduct and I felt that they had degraded this man’s worthiness as a human being by laughing amongst themselves at his vision. I did not know what to do. I went through a million things in my head, but none of them seemed right (ie. the first thing I thought of was getting up and smacking them both across the face then storming off the bus and walking to the gym). How dare they belittle another human being in such a way! They obviously have no respect for their fellow brother and obviously cannot seem to open their minds to others’ ways of life. I am certain that to them that ad sponsored by the CNIB means nothing. Perhaps the most they get out of it is that “blind” people must by psychic in order to know exactly what you’re doing, before flipping the channel just as the script appears across the screen.
If you are reading this and can identify with the two women of my story, please, please learn from this anecdote: be open-minded, don’t be judgmental, and be respectful of those around you. We are not here to make each other’s lives miserable, rather to help one another where needed and to treat each other with the same dignity with which we would like to be treated. If we could all just manage this simple task then I’m sure no one will ever have to express the sentiments I have recorded above, ever again …