There doesn't seem much point in bluffing it these days – the audience is a bit more limited and most of my mob know the script. It’s a shame, as I quite enjoyed the pretend years, shuffling around tentatively, wielding the cane like a staff of office and quietly enjoying muttered asides like, “It’s amazing the way he copes.”
Over the years, I've found lots of people tend to say superfluous stuff around blindies. My least favourite is, “I can't imagine what it’s like!” I usually reply, “Darkish.” There's nothing like flippancy to end pointless conversation. However, the technique got blown apart recently when my grandson asked the same question. Blindness is not a dinner-table topic in the Plumbly household; I tend to restrict my views on sight loss to BLVNZ or these pages. Truth be told, I dread the inevitable “Is it genetic?” and “Will I get it?” I skirted the problem, quite cunningly I thought, by posting him some of the pieces I'd written over the years, hoping a few grandfatherly ramblings might take the edge off things…
On the bright side
Cunning, I discovered, is a bit wasted on today's youngsters. When he turned up a week later and re-opened the interrogation, I got the impression today's teenagers have a more retentive train of thought. “You treat it like it’s a joke,” he said, “Why don't you write about the serious side?” The simple answer is that I can get enough reality second-hand without producing my own, and 'blindy moments' are far more fun. Like a young bank teller asking for driving licence ID before spotting the white cane and muttering, “Oh shit!” After I’d stopped laughing, she recovered enough to ask if I'd found a park OK – so who needs serious? I'm no stranger to accusations of treating sight loss lightly; it’s not that I'm trying to minimise anyone else's struggles, it’s just my way of dealing with it. However, some situations leave me convinced technology and retinitis pigmentosa are out to get me.
What the doctor ordered
