CQ Excerpt shared with Lamar Library Folks On Sept 28
There was no one I could talk to about these little
frustrations at NGC. I didn’t feel that my sighted friends would
understand, and I didn’t know them well enough yet to be open
about blindness-related struggles. I decided it was time to make a
tape to my friend Dawn, who was also legally blind. Dawn and I
had met and become friends over a year ago at the South Carolina
Commission for the Blind’s Summer Teen Program. Since I wasn’t
good at reading Braille, and she couldn’t read print, we’d begun
corresponding by cassette on a regular basis. Dawn had been born
blind also. Like me, she’d attended “mainstream” schools rather
than a school for the blind. I knew she would understand the
difficulties I was facing.
I pushed my studies aside and spent a few minutes talking
into my hand-held tape recorder, relating all the experiences I’d
had during my first week of college. I told her about the lady at the
post office, how the RAs had applauded just because I’d managed
to walk down a flight of steps and unlock a door, how I’d missed
the meeting for voice classes, and the difficulties I was having
reading my professors’ handwriting. It felt good to share thoughts
and feelings with someone who understood my need for
independence and dignity.
From past experience, I knew Dawn would give her honest
opinion on everything I said. She was pretty straightforward when
it came to saying what she thought of a person or situation. I
appreciated that about her. Dawn also valued being self-sufficient.
We had similar philosophies about that. Both of us considered
ourselves smart and capable and didn’t have a lot of patience for
times when blindness, or other people’s attitudes about it, seemed
to be limiting us or slowing us down.
I felt better when I finally shut off the tape recorder and
returned to my Western Civ textbook. As I’d expected, it was my
most challenging course. Dr. Hickson had assigned generous
portions of the book to be read and outlined, and I felt
overwhelmed by the amount of reading material. I knew I wasn’t covering material fast
enough and began to worry about falling behind. But I had no
intention of asking for extra time or help. I was determined to keep
up with my classmates and meet the same standards they met. If I
wanted to receive a college education, I would do it just as the
others did, and if that meant working twice as hard, I was prepared
to do so.
On Wednesday afternoon, I walked over to the library with
Robin, a friend from French class. We were going to have copies
made of the tapes needed to complete our workbooks and work
through one of the lessons together. We went back to my room so I
could use the CCTV and spent a boring half hour filling in blanks
and translating simple French sentences spoken by the people on
the tapes.
After we finished, we went to the cafeteria to get ice-cream
cones and walked around campus as we ate them. We’d been
laughing and talking about nothing in particular for a while when
Robin suddenly grew more serious.
“You know, Carmella,” she said. “I don’t think of you as
being different from anyone else around here. I mean, you get
around campus and do your work as well as the rest of us.”
I was glad to hear her say that. It meant a lot to me that I
was being accepted as a person. This was the goal I was working
so hard to achieve. For me, the most difficult thing about being
visually impaired was facing the inability of sighted people to look
past my blindness and get to know me on a deeper level. I hoped
that others were beginning to feel as Robin did.
I’d received a variety of questions and comments about my
sight loss over the past week and a half. Most of the conversations
I had about it were similar to the one I’d had with Kelly the day we
met. People wanted to know about the CCTV, what had happened
to my eyes, how much I could see, and how I knew who people
were. Others came up with more interesting inquiries and remarks.
“Are you angry at the doctors for not being able to fix your
eyes?” someone asked.
“Angry?” I echoed in surprise. “No, they did the best they
could for me. They kept me alive, and I didn’t lose all of my sight.
They just didn’t know what they know today about preventing that
from happening.”
It had never occurred to me to be upset with the medical
professionals involved in my earliest days. I could’ve had
problems that, in my opinion, would’ve been much worse than
blindness. I could’ve suffered brain damage, or developed cerebral
palsy or a number of other physical or mental disabilities. I wasn’t
thrilled to be blind, of course, but I could think of plenty of things
that were worse.
“I wasn’t sure about coming here to college,” one girl told
me. “I mean, I’m not really smart, and I don’t like to study. Then I
saw you here and thought: If that blind girl can do it, anyone can.”
I wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment or not,
but I chose to assume she meant it in a positive way.
I was very open to educating others about my visual
limitations and blindness in general. As long as someone
approached the subject in a respectful manner, I was more than
willing to give them honest answers. I would rather they had
accurate information than speculate about how I, or any other blind
person, coped with the problems associated with sight loss
Wednesday night, a group of girls from my hall, along with
several other people, decided to go out to dinner. Tim, being from
the area, was called upon to recommend and lead us to a good
restaurant. As we stood in the parking lot next to my dorm
deciding who was going to ride with whom, someone came up
behind me and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Hey, it’s Scott. Are you driving?”
“I sure am,” I said. “My parents bought me a new car
before I came up here, and I wanted to show it off. You can ride
with me if you have good life insurance and promise to buckle up.”
“Okay,” he said amiably. “I love to live dangerously and
I’m covered.”
“There’s a difference between living dangerously and being
suicidal,” I reminded him.
“Not much,” he said.
Coming up beside me, Tim interrupted, “Are you riding
with me?”
We had a good time that evening. Tim was quite a
gentleman. He opened doors for me and was my sighted guide into
and out of the restaurant. That was one good thing about being
visually impaired, I thought. It gave me an excuse to walk around
on a man’s arm.