The happy people, including myself, will tell you that when it’s impossible to change your circumstances, change how you react to them… Full disclosure, sometimes… No most of the time… all you can do is laugh!
As a blind person, everything in my life happens just a little bit slower than what you are probably used to. I have a mini tantrum every time someone moves things around in my house, not because I’m pedantic, but because it will most likely take me 20 minutes of feeling around with my hands, bumping things off table tops and generally just creating more chaos, before I locate it, 20 centimetres from its usual place. The more irritated I get, the longer it takes me to find that object, well hidden in plain sight… and the truth is that I don’t need others to bring disaster to my life, I am completely capable of managing that, perfectly on my own.
It is no secret that I’m not a morning person. I normally get up long before I’m actually awake and my first cup of coffee is the most important part of my day. What you don’t know is that I also hate the smell of milk, so more than once, I have opened the fridge, grabbed like what felt like the milk bottle and ended up with peach flavoured Tropica in my cup of life… and friends, that’s how I know that peach coffee will never be a thing!
I have no idea how toothpaste always manages to be everywhere but on the actual toothbrush, I suppose I touch it when I put it on and then because you need to scrub your fingers for about 10 minutes before it’s washed off, [which I never do…] is how 20 years after being a toddler, I still go out in public with toothpaste in my hair, on my nose and on my clothes… Why does no one believe you when you explain that it’s just toothpaste???
At least I know I’m not the only one, in conversations with other blind people, eventually we get around to what we refer to as the blind moments and I finally feel better about wearing one green and one red sock when they tell me about the time Shower jell was mistaken for body lotion or spray-paint for insect repellent… and while I have never accidentally sprayed streaks of red or yellow paint all over my kitchen, I have put sugar into dishes that required salt and my boyfriend once put xylitol in his coffee instead of ordinary sugar… If you are not aware of the side effects of xylitol, now is the time to google it, before you make that mistake… unless of course you want a sick day!
While I was a student, I walked into so many classes where I most certainly did not belong and when you have a guide dog or even a cane, there’s just no way of quietly slipping out… Oh no, you are always stopped, asked if you need help, and explaining your mistake just never gets less awkward and years after, you still find people asking you if you manage to find your way around campus now…
You might think that nothing can be worse than public humiliation, which might be true, but things can always get a whole lot wetter! Last year I moved into a block of flats and where I take my dog for a busy, is a swimming pool… You have to walk on the side of it to get around it and so confidently, wearing a bright yellow t-shirt, I made my way to the grass, I tripped over a plant I wasn’t aware of and apart from going for my first swim for the season, I also had to do the walk of “nobody has to wonder what had happened” all the way to the top floor where I live.
I live through plenty of these moments in a day, I’ve addressed a woman as sir and had long conversations with mannequins and all I have learnt from all these experiences is how to laugh at myself and to move on. You can’t learn from these situations, because you are bound to step into the same traps more times than you can count. It is simply a part of living with blindness and it clearly happens to all of us so you are most definitely not alone.