A BLACK-AND-WHITE EXAMPLE OF IGNORANCE.

"How can you see if you're blind?" Certain uncharitable people have asked me this over the years as if they caught me in a lie. The fact is that I have partial sight, even though the Government of Canada considers me to be legally blind. I can only distinguish general objects, not details such as people's eye colour.

One striking example of fully-sighted folks misunderstanding my limitations happened in January of 1988. Being newly licensed as an amateur radio operator, I devoted much of my free time to the hobby. Every tuesday evening, the Northern Alberta Radio Club held an on-air meeting called a net. At the end of each one, people listed radio equipment that they had for sale or which they wanted to buy. When the controller of the net mentioned that a certain person had a black-and-white video camera for sale, I was the first one to express interest in buying it. The man selling the camera objected on the grounds that I was legally blind, but the net controller declared my offer to be an official bid.

I could feel the waves of hostility as I walked into the next meeting of the club with my money. The man with the camera sold me the device but I could tell he felt nothing but contempt for my audaciousness. After all, what possible use would a video camera be to somebody like me.

As it turned out, I did use that camera quite a bit. I made video letters for my sister, Diane, and a few home videos of me with my rabbit, Floppy. I even made videos for some electronic music tunes that I composed. I still have the camera to this day and it still works.

I've written about other occasions where my poor vision has caused consternation among my sighted associates. Many of these vignettes are included in my When a Man Loves a Rabbit (Learning and Living With Bunnies) and Deliverance from Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School) memoirs. Feel free to contact me directly or friend me on Facebook to learn more about these paperbacks.

A QUESTION OF QUESTIONABLE QUESTIONING.

Perhaps some folks will disagree with me but I believe having partial vision is, in many ways, worse than being totally blind. Fully sighted folks seem better able to comprehend total blindness better than poor vision.

Throughout my life, I've had to explain my level of vision. Neighbourhood kids, mimicking parents and other sighted adults, held up fingers and asked me to count them. I hated that. It made me feel like some sort of freak. They also threw stones at me while calling, "blindie, and "four eyes." No wonder I often played alone.

My school days were likewise filled with incidents where pupils and teachers felt uncertain about what I could or couldn't see. At first, I was allowed to draw pictures and play with plasticine because the teacher believed I couldn't possibly be taught anything. When I started learning aurally, she showed me off to the principal as if some sort of miracle happened.

My freedom came to an end in 1964 when a government agent convinced my parents to send me to Jericho Hill School for the Deaf and Blind. They, never suspecting the institution's endemic sexual harassment of deaf children, sent me there for six long years. I only came home for Christmas, summer, and three Easters. Because the bar magnifying glasses they had there weren't of any help to me, somebody decided I should learn braille. I objected since I had enough vision to read with an eight power magnifying glass. My teachers soon gave up on me and let me read large print.

On September 16, 2011, I blogged about the pathetic vision aids that were provided to me by my parents in junior high and high school. My visual arts teacher gave me the first decent magnifying glass, a type similar to what jewellers use. Though some thug cut the combination lock on my locker and stole it, along with the monocular which I read the blackboard with, I managed to find similar visual aids through the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB).

I've also experienced similar challenges to my truthfulness in several workplaces and in personal relationships throughout my adult life. These are too numerous to mention here.

The crux of the matter is that people feel a sense of unease about me until I demonstrate how much or little I'm able to see. As I've explained in Deliverance from Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School) and to a lesser extent in When a Man Loves a Rabbit (Learning and Living With Bunnies), I see well enough to get around but I can't see details. I have to go close to something to tell what it is. I've also learned that there are always work-arounds to my difficulties. As long as I can, I intend to live as independently as possible.