It was a typical day for this elderly senior citizen, as he attempted to begin his morning exercise. The temp was in the low 50s, causing his frail body to become chilled to the bone. He had procured his present wife’s sweat shirt, having none of his own, and he found an old ragged cap which would partially protect his fragile head from the extremely cool weather.
Who was this elderly senior citizen? You guessed it, me! I began this long walk down the avenue as the darkness seem to close in on me. This darkness caused me to not see everything clearly, more or less as if, I were blind. It was at this point in time that I begin to harken back to another time and place when the sun was shining brightly and the temperature was a warm 86 degrees. I was about 19 years old, and I was driving home for lunch. About a block and a half from my home I observed an older gentleman, a neighbor of ours, walking in the center of the street.
The gentleman lived across the street from me and always walked with a cane. The cane is important to the story because it was, “red and white”, indicating that he was blind. Somehow he had gotten off the side walk into the street.
The old neighborhood had sidewalks in front of all the houses, and alleys behind the houses were the garbage cans were placed for pickup. In the olden days we did not put our trash in front of our homes for pickup. People walked on the sidewalks, not in the street. Kids, for the most part, would roller skate, play hopscotch and ride their bikes on the sidewalks.
Seeing the gentleman in the street I stopped my car. And walked up to him explaining that I am his neighbor and I would be happy to help him get back on the sidewalk. He was happy to except my invitation. Taking my arm, we walked to a near driveway and then onto the sidewalk.
He explained to me that driveways can be a problem to a blind person, and that was how he got into the street. Using the cane he is able to determine that nothing is in front of him, while also determining the edge of the side walk. When a blind person comes to a driveway (no longer an edge of the walk) he may assume he has moved away from the edge of the sidewalk, and in an effort to correct the direction of walk, turn slightly. When a blind person gets disoriented by a driveway and into a street, he will not be able to reorient himself without help.
I was able to get him back on the side walk, explain exactly where he was in this block, and he was ready and able to navigate home.
After those thoughts had rushed through my head, I began to consider the same situation in today’s world. What are the odds that a teenager would help, I would hope they would but… I also considered that a teenager today might see this as an opportunity to rob someone who could not see him?
Other individuals might consider this man as someone trying to look helpless, in an effort to rob or do harm to them. Believing the person was faking the blindness, they would likely not stop and help. Even worse, and more likely to happen in today’s world, the driver would be texting as they drove past the blind man in the street and not even see him.
I would hope that anyone would help, but I doubt it.
May your memories all be nice!
Don Ford
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