Sunday Afternoon
What a pretty day. It
is Sunday afternoon and I'm sitting in an air-conditioned living room
surfing the net and listening to the television in the background.
Smallvill is on. It is a rerun of course. It doesn't matter. I'm not
listening really. I just need some noise to drown out my neighbors.
There are kids playing outside. I watched them yesterday afternoon
for a moment. They had hand signals and they were “sneaking”
around the sides of buildings. I wander what they were playing. Are
they commandoes saving the president? Are they sneaking through a
dragons cave? Are they avoiding the local geek?I almost gave them my
old set of walky-talkies. Some one should get some use out of them.
it is eighty degrees in my apartment and the AC kicks in every
ten minutes. That is about right. It is going to be a warm Summer I
bet. I have some plans this Summer. I will go swimming at least once.
I will go out to a bar with friends more than once. I will take
pictures of my experiences. I will put myself in the path of women.
(in a good way) I will work outside of work to better myself. I will
take time to learn, it doesn't matter what.
Just what can I see?
I am legally blind.
No one seems to know what that means. It means different things.
Q: How far can
I see?
A: I can see the stars, just not as brightly. Though
in Yellowstone the stars are close enough to pluck from the heavens
and hand to your love.
Q: Were you born this way?
A: Yes.
I have never known any other way of being.
Q: Why do I
turn the monitor brightness down so dim?
A: I sit about 3
inches from the screen. some one with normal vision might sit 24
inches from the screen. When you cut the distance from you eye to the
screen in half, you multiply the amount of light going into your eye
by four. There for, I have 64 times as much light entering my eye. If
some one sites 48 inches away, I have 256 times as much light
entering my eye as theirs. it is like trying to read with some one
shining a flashlight in your eye. Since I turn down the monitor so
much, it really helps to be in a darkened room. Since I'm in a
darkened room, any glare really wipes out what comes up on the
screen.
Q: Why do I
think I qualify for Metro Lift?
A: I cannot read the signs
on streets or on the busses without aid of a telescope. Even then, a
bus has a sign on the front of it that says what rout it is. The
letters are pretty big, but there are three things that make it all
but impossible for me to read. The bus is moving. The letters are
changing (cycling from one description to another constantly).
Lastly, the letters are made of dots. Even when back-lit at night the
sign looks like it is bouncing around.
Q: What size
type can you read?
A: I can read normal book size type. On
the internet, people love to make graphics into text and user fancy
fonts, or funky colors for their type to make it stand out. That is
like the worse thing in the world for legally blind folks.
Q: Why don't I
use one of those giant screen magnifiers or a magnifier that shoots
up a whole page at a time?
A: They don't work for me. A
small magnifier that allows me to focus on one piece of text at a
time works far better in most situations.
Q: Can I watch
movies?
A: I watch movies all the time. Quite often I don't
get as much out of it as others. There are times when I miss visual
jokes or don't catch what a sign or piece of paper says. I fake it.
Subtitles have always been my down fall. I now download movies that
have subtitles and pause the action every couple of seconds to catch
what the people say. I love Japanese Animation and this method is the
only way I can stand to watch the shows. A telescope has never worked
for television or the movies because it is too much of a not hole to
view the action through.
Q: How do I
know when a girl smiles at me in “that way”?
A: I
don't.
There is that dance that happens between men and women when
they find that they have a fascination with each other. It is that
batting of the eyes, that look down and a smile thing that scientists
have defined as the human mating ritual . This ritual is visual and
more. It is body language and that “come hither” look. It
is “bedroom eyes”. The problem is not that I miss it all
together. The trouble is I only get about half the signals. It makes
for far too acquired a situation. The dance must be graceful. Lapses
in the order and timing are killers.
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