How do Normal people see us

Ok strange title, I know, but I've had quite a spooky experience tonight at the pub, sorry this might go on for a while so feel free to ignore it.

First I'll explain to those who may not know, my dear wife and I are visually impaired.

Now we're not stangers to pubs, clubs and all that and we like to have a drink or two.

We've just moved out to a new area and thought we'd try some of the locals out, anyway its our 2nd time in this particular one, and I decided I needed to find the Loo, anyway I must have taken a wrong turn or something (no this isn't going where you think it might) someone stopped me and said "Your blind arn't you", so I politly siad "I'm trying to find the loo", anway he showed me the correct way to go, but on my return he chatted to me about my sight (which I don't have a problem with) but when I explained about my wife and my condition each ending was met with "oh god, that must be terrible, I'm so sorry" and "how do you do it".

Now we've come up against this before, but this guy was really over the top, like tapping everyone on the sholder and saying "these couple are blind do you know" and bascily treating us like we where 5 or something, I wanted to tell the guy to polietly "kcuf off!", was qutie embarrassing.

This, I admit, is a very isoliated case, I realise it must be as difficult to people without a disability to understand those with one.

I'm just basicly interested to know how you " normal " people see us, I guess you'd had seen / met Dom and Harry on bake off's and I've met Tony (WM) and guys at Bristol Show last year.

Is a disability harder for some people to accept than others? I mean its normal to me, as I know no different.

Any thoughts?

 

You won't find many normal people here, dude.

I've met you (briefly, at Bristol last year), and Dom and Henry a couple of times, and you all strike me as very different personalities, but all equally adept at coping with your disabilities, so much so that they're hardly noticeable most of the time. Like most people, it takes me a little while to adapt when meeting someone with a disability, but being terribly English my usual reaction is not to mention it at all, which generally seems to work out as being the right thing to do. I've got to know a few people with disabilities quite well over the years, it always seems to turn out that they have a very sick sense of humour about people with their own condition, and find the reaction of polite able-bodied chaps like myself to it highly amusing.

-- Ian

 

a very tough topic. if i'm honest with myself i do find it more difficult to interact with disabled people than with 'normal' people. mainly because i feel i have to self censor every sentance (for example i had to look at your post to make sure that 'normal' in quotes naturally was going to be acceptable). also there is the dread of saying something that could be taken the wrong way - in the best tradition of english farce that can impair conversation too. i'd like to think i wouldn;t act like the tit you met in the pub (other than to help you in the direction of the loo) but if he was a particularly nervous type i could understand him overcompensating and going too far with it.
at the end of the day though everyone is different, you're visually impaired, i'm overweight, tony has a typing impediment, all part of lifes rich tapestry. oh god, did i just insult you by belittling your disability, is this sentance offensive, shit, i'll shut up now....see what i mean?
cheers


julian

 

Hi Ian, thanks for taking the time to read my rambilings.

Thank you for your kind comments too.

Yes I remember meeting you last year, was good fun. I think your "terribly English" approach is the right one (IMHO), and causes less awkwardness.

Last thing we need is for people to feel "sorry" for us, I don't mean that in a bad way, and I don't mean to sound ungreatful or otherwise, but its something we've lived with for most of our lives and we've adapted to it.

But anyway it would help me at least to try to work out why some people see us "differently"?

Cheers

Lee

 

Hi julian, ya I didn't think it would be an easy one, but I thank you for your thoughts.

Interesting, so if I get this right, are people worried that we are easily offended, and what they say might upset us. If this is true it would make some sense, I have noticed people at work say something like "blind leading the blind" and then say sorry to me, why? should I be offended by that? Maybe I'm thick skinned or something.

Belive me I'm more offended by people over-reacting than people taking the mic, the only time that I be offendded is if someone took seriously ment to cause me offence, but we do have a sense of humor, come one we need to!!! Life is too short!

Your right though, no one is perfect, and it would be boring world if we were.

I think you interact with me, ok so I know its only a forum, I remember a heated discussion about cycling we had in the summer, that was fun. But I'm begining to understand why you might feel nervous when your with disabled people, its the unknown for you, how to act, react and all that.

Again thanks for you thoughts.

Lee

 

Many of the people with disabilities I have met prefer not to be treated like they're made of china. My wife prefers this approach too.

She has approx 80% hearing loss but copes with it very well. She lost her hearing after catching measels at the age of five, but by then her language skills were developed so her speech isn't too affected. Most people don't realise unless they see her hearing aid. Then we normally have a laugh as they start to over-compensate.

 

Hi Hex, nice to hear from you.

That is one of the reasons why I don't use my "symbol" cane, 90% of time I can get away with not needing it, so people never know and that's fine with me. but if I need to use it, like its somewhere I'm not sure of, you do get treated differently. But before I dig myself a huge hole, there is another thing I have noticed.

When we do feel the need to ask for help, my wife gets different response to me, although she has the better sight, so not only is there a disability issue there is also a gender issue, but I'll save that one for another post.

 

Whenever I have met Henry and Dom, I dont view them as any different from anyone else, and often completely forget about their eyesight. In fact, when I have given Henry a lift, sometimes I find myself checking with him the directions as if he is navigating, only afterwards realising it's probably not that easy for him to do

 

lee,
the 'blind leading the blind' thing is spot on. it's really a very selfish fear of embarrassing ones self, so the immediate reaction is to appologise profusely and inadvertantly single the disabled person out as different and hence cause far more offense than perhaps the origional remark may have done. at the end of the day i'd hope that if i was talking to a person with a disability and was acting like an arse that they'd call me on it.
cheers


julian

 

Hi Ihatkins. Just out of curiousity, are you blind as in zero vision or just have a very bad eyesight? How do you manage to read the mails here? Typing of course can be done with braillied keyboard, but reading?


regards

 

It must be quite hard are to have ppor eye sight but I understand why people going on about it all the time will probably be rather off putting. I have high frequency hearing loss but luckily its fine with music as its amplifiied so I can hear everything, its just normal level speech I some times have problems with. I don't wear my hearing aids any more because they sound awful and I can manage without.

I found at school it was very annoying when people used to go on about my hearing I just felt like saying so what its a minor conidition I have its not contagous.

As for how do 'normal' people see you well I guess I am not normal but I have great respect for people that manage to be successfull despite having set backs. The guy in the pub probably just had too much and was probably just being polite and didn't realise that he was being slightly offensive.

I think its great that you still go clubbing and stuff like that because clubs tend to be very lame places. Having said that I went to a club were there was a disabled person (in wheel chair) there once, I thought that was pretty good.

Good luck anyway and I hope the locals don't cause any more problems.

 

I don't have no problem with disabled people,and why the hell should anyone,they are human beings like everybody else,I don't care about a persons colour skin, where there from,what class they are,we are all made of the some stuff and die the same,the people who I can't take are thoes who talk about themselves,what they've got etc etc etc,so Lhatkins stop worring,they've got the problem not you.

 

How do Normal people see us?






....quite clearly thanks.





















Tell me straight, is that offensive?

See, to me, that is just a minor joke, probably not that funny, but when i saw the question, it just popped into my head. What do you think of it though? I suppose it depends who said it, and in what manner it is conveyed though? Its all in the interpretation. I can quite acceptably envisage how that could be deemed offensive - hell i might get lynched. But political correctness builds barriers. Many people might fear approaching you through fear of being in a potentially uncomfotable situation or at risk of what they might say. I'd never go out of my way to harm someone, but yet it is much easier to do this with the 'protected' minorities than your 'normal' person. I mean if you walk over for a chat to a disabled, lesbian, black woman who weighs in at 150kg with an IQ of 50, you wouldn't want to open your mouth through fear. What kind of climate is that for human relations. I mean, its probably easy said, but in all seriousness, i wouldn't be offended by anything, and its all in the intent anyway, between harm and sincerity.

Anyway, if it pisses you off, i didn't mean it (well i did, but not in a bad way) urm arh erm....damn - i'm making it worse, just like Julian said i would.

ATB

We're all the same.


I'm normally very polite, and a proper citizen.

 

But here's the thing - to all of us partially sighted people, our own individual eyesight is "perfect" as we've never known normal sight - the only exception I can think of is Leon's wife, who had perfect eyesight until about 10 (is that right Leon?).

It's the OTT patronising thing that pees me off, but I do sometimes carry my cane as the nystagmus thing can make you look like a speedfreak or something when it acts up...

Everyone works with what they're given - it's the ones who lay down and die that people should feel sorry for....

 

I have to say, when I'm with people I don't know who have an obvious disability I find myself very self-conciously trying to make sure I don't say "the wrong thing" whilst behaving as normally as I possibly can, trying to be just as I would be with anyone else.

It annoys me that I get all self-concious like that but I hope it isn't too obvious to others

Michael.

 

Very interesting question. I happen to know many actually blind – I mean, zero vision – people from my early youth (there are a lot of organists who are blind, you know).

I don't remember my first reactions, but they may have been of awkwardness. However, I had two particularly close friends who happened to be actually blind. They were faculty colleagues and one of them was a musician, too. As what and how one actually says and gesture about things is the relevant part of communication, I didn't feel it awkward at all since I gesture not much (therefore there is no meaning loss) but blind people do it normally.

In the end I could even talk about the way they oriented themselves. I was fascinated by the fact that my friends used echolocation (which I already knew) but that the feedback they got was a kind of image – a visual image, they called it: there is a very good German word for it: they saw a Gestalt before them. In English we might call it a form, a volume, a silhouette or something like that; They made it quite clear: 'What I see is a Gestalt, for instance, of a car', and they went on to actually outline the profile by gesturing.

So, really, there was no difficulty at all.

Now a much more difficult case is happening now: my dear Mother is going blind. She can't read any longer and that is terrible to her, and I feel she doesn't decode my visual expressions very well. That is extremely painful to me. Anyway, when we talk there is no problem at all, as usual.

I find it much more difficult to communicate with deaf people. I speak very clearly but rather softly. I find myself having to raise my voice as I do in class (I'm a Professor) and that does make the communication less natural. But then there are marvelous bits of misunderstanding.

My father in law is rather deaf. The other day he went shopping with my wife. Since they were going, I asked my wife to get me a specific kind of notebook: we know it as 'a little black book'. My father in law asked me: 'Oh, you want cold melon?' Now how on earth can people confuse 'a little black book' with 'cold melon' I just don't know!!! And what on earth is cold melon, anyway?? We still laugh about it, today.

As a matter of fact I find it much difficult to interact naturally with women than with blind people. Underneath the communication I always find an undercurrent of sexuality which is very difficult to control. The same problem occurs with male homosexuals.

So, in answer to your question: how do I see blind people? As I do other people: as brains processing the information I convey to you and receiving the same.

Finally, excuse me for not using the politically correct 'visually impaired' – I call gays homosexuals, visually impaired blind, hearing impaired deaf and I don't use politically correct expressions at all because they strike me as insulting to the people concerned. It is as if we don't dare to refer to their problem.

 

Dude,
as I have not met you in the flesh I can only judge you by the medium of this forum and to me you seem no more eccentric than I - slightly over opinionated but if you buy your round of beer then we should get on rather well together. One of the women I worked with a while back had rather bad hearing, she told me that she loved listening to me because I made her laugh by making lots of puns using homophones, synonyms ect - I treated her just as I would other although I must admit I made the effort to speak directly to her face when ever we talked.

As always it is what's between the ears that counts and that goes for both parties.

Auric

Ps I suffer form a mild form of dyslexia but my verbal foreplay is 10/10 so no too many complaints.
PPS God save the spell checker!

 

Hey, Auric:

Which Dude are you referring to? Lhatkins or myself?

It must be Lhatkins because I am never over opinionated :rds2:

Sorry, couldn't resist it! :MILD:

 

If you stand your round then it can't be you.

Auric

 

I thought so.