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Sometimes, Being Blind Feels Like I Am the Invisible Man
Blind? Who is the blind one here?
It often amazes me that walking into a doctors office or restaurant. I appear to have become completely invisible.
I mean I will walk into these places with my wife or friends and they are greeted and spoken too warmly.
I walk in alone either with my long white cane or my guide dog, a seventy pound black Labrador Retriever and crickets. Silence or worse the person behind me is greeted warmly.
It never used to happen.
Twenty years ago. I could see. I could look directly at the restaurant host or the doctors receptionist and fix them with my eyes.
These days, I need a sound, a cough, the click of a nail on a cell phone screen to know where you are. Then I can look your way.
The alternative is to stand, forlorn and helpless. Looking pitiful as my wife says. Or the alternate scream at the top of my voice “Is there anyone in this bloody place?”
I want to do the latter. Oh! I so want to do the latter. But I don’t. I bite my lip and just think thoughts of visibility in my head.
Have you ever played that game with a young child?
