Five-Star Disability

Hello Readers!

I hope you are well!

What do you see when you are looking at someone?  You, with the normal vision, the sharp-I-can-see-everything sort of eyesight that is common among 87% of the population.

Do you see the colour of a strangers eyes at 200 yards?

Can you spot a moth circling a flame 20 paces to your left?

Are you able to spot the difference between a bee and a hornet?

When the lights go out, and its dark, are you still able to see clearly?

Can you drive and still see the GPS device on the dashboard, while not getting lost?

A lot of people do have issues reading so I won’t add that.

Lucky you!

For me, I’d like to tell you what I see!

If a person is a foot or two away, I can see your face, and signs.  This is my preferred spot for chatting and watching TV (but lo, the captions, more on that in a minute).

But if you were to move back 5 feet, your face becomes plastic.  I can just make out your eyes, I can’t see the colour at 1 foot either, your nose has disappeared.  Your mouth is still there, if its open.  I could see your hands, and my grab some meaning, but probably not much.

The further away you are, the more of a pink, or brown, or tan, or green, blob you become!  And your hands, or signs are all fused.

A while back, I lived at an apartment building with a black caretaker, when he was close by, I could see his facial expressions, yet, when he was at the end of the hall, all I saw was his overbright smile, and maybe two white dots.  In recent times, we had a black friend over for an evening of fun at our backyard firepit.  When it got darker and darker, the sun set in the front yard, her face disappeared, so did her hair!  Its good thing she had on black & white shirt, or I’d swear she’d disappeared too!

Watching TV I like, with captions I prefer.  I have always, even before I got my first CC decoder circa 1990, sat fairly close to the TV.  Watching TV takes a great deal of concentration, so everything else, other than a tossed remote in my direction, would distract me.  Also, I rarely watch the actual show AND the captioning.  I generally focus on the captions all the time.

Let’s not discuss quality of captioning, suffice to say, in the early days it was pretty shoddy, now it is better.  I remember one very funny typo that was hard to resist laughing at: the news was talking about an evacuation, but it came out as “People were ejaculated from the burning house!    Umm, Okay!

Too me, a bug is a bug, a bee is a bee, a hornet is a bee, a mosquito is a horsefly, is a stink bug.  I can’t tell the difference!

I have had glasses, and find they help, but I am not sure I want them back.

I am very used to the field of vision I have.  It is a part of me, and I see no problems with it!

Well, see ya next time!