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Sensory Truama
An Hour Without Sight Capability Raises Awareness
By Lauren Glenn
The Ledger
WINTER HAVEN Wearing a black sleep mask, clutching a white cane in one hand and the arm of a stranger in the other, I spent nearly 45 minutes stumbling in sidewalk cracks, anxiously stepping into one of my greatest fears.
I was blind.
The borrowed cane I held glided over sidewalk cracks, asphalt and grass, and I frequently heard myself asking my guide, "Where are we now?"
The truth is, I have spent most of my 24 years unafraid: whitewater rafting, short-distance rock climbing, three hurricanes, two tropical storms, and a six-month stint in a New Orleans neighborhood where my home was only two blocks from a reputed crack house.
None of it scared me, at least not in a way that I did not find exhilarating.
But on Saturday morning, at Central Avenue and First Street in Winter Haven, guided by a legally blind woman and listening to the roaring of motorcycles and diesel-engine trucks rushing past me, I was scared.
"Did you hear that truck?" asked my guide, Joann Burwick, 38, who though legally blind, does have partial sight. "That truck just nearly hit us."
Vehicles turning right at crosswalks, not bothering to stop for pedestrians, plague blind people.
"People just don't stop like they should," Burwick said.
Which is why if you were passing through the intersection of Central Avenue and First Street on Saturday morning, you may have seen a man in dark glasses, holding a white cane and a sign that read:
"Stop for blind pedestrians, carrying a white cane or with a guide dog. It's the law in all 50 states."
Meanwhile, a dozen members of the National Federation of the Blind, some of them completely without sight, walked back and forth across the street, in their own attempt to make a statement: Consider the blind.
Most carried white canes similar to the one I held, and one woman, Eva Crowder, 34, was led by Cara, her 4-year-old seeing eye dog, a golden retriever-yellow Labrador mix.
And what of the keener sense of hearing that people so often say blindness brings? Apparently that is something acquired over time. Instead, I felt as if the rest of my senses had deteriorated when I put on the blindfold.
"Listen to the cars coming from the left of you," Joann kept reminding me. She said blind people rely on the sounds of passing cars to know when it is safe to cross the street.
"Can you feel them rushing past?" she asked.
I was probably never in serious danger. I had Joann to guide me, which is more than many blind people will ever have.
Joann, who lives in Lakeland, was a student at Polk Community College when blindness found her at the age of 19.
One morning, a school day, she woke up and noticed she was seeing funny.
Still, she got in her car and drove to her class in Winter Haven. But she bumped curbs -- several of them.
When she got out of her car, she placed a hand over her left eye and discovered she could see nothing out of the right.
Joann doesn't remember how she got home that day. An eye doctor told her he didn't know what the problem was, and they still don't, 19 years later.
She hates not being able to drive. She drove everywhere, for as long as she could, before she was told she couldn't anymore.
And because buses don't run after 6:30 p.m., "At night, you're stuck," she said. "You're just stuck."
At 10:30 a.m. -- the event started at 9 a.m. -- Winter Haven Mayor Mike Easterling showed up to read a resolution declaring October "National Federation for the Blind" month for the city.
Then, it was time to strap on his own mask and cross the street with Eva, the woman with the guide dog.
Most of my life, when I saw a person walking with a white cane, I assumed it was used solely for them to keep from falling down.
Instead, though, the white cane is very much about feeling what is right there in front of you, or next to you, and the longer you hold it and use it, the more you feel.
Run the cane over the asphalt street and you feel every bump and groove vibrating up toward your hand. Run it over a crosswalk and you feel smooth vibrations as the cane's roller passes over the lines that you cannot tell are painted white.
Then, as you cross the street, you feel an abrupt bump or jab and you know the cane has hit the curb. You step cautiously because if you trip, who knows what you may fall on top of.
Watch out for the lamp post, the street sign, the deep crack that has formed over time.
And especially, watch out for a car sitting on the crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn green.
"See that car right there?" Joann asks, and I laugh because no, I can't see it at all.
"Well, of course you can't see it," she said. "But it stopped on the crosswalk."
People don't realize that blind people depend on the crosswalk's painted lines to reassure them that they're not wandering into the street, as I nearly did several times.
When it was over, and I took my mask was off, I still found myself grasping at things as if I could not see them.
But for all my stumbling and anxiety Saturday morning, I cannot say that I truly experienced being blind.
I never had to learn to overcome a life of blindness like many of those who walked along beside me had.
Joann has returned to PCC and hopes to work in some form of public service, helping handicapped people or maybe as a social worker.
She studies with friends and is a member of an honor society, Pi Kappa Mu.
She is divorced, has a son who is 18, and she wants to find someone special.
"Make sure you put in there `single white female,' " she said with a laugh.
Most men worry that they will have to take care of her, she said. But that's not true.
"I can take care of myself," she said, looking more serious than she did most of the entire day.
But there's another reason that I did not really feel what blind people do every day: I was only without sight for less than an hour.
NFB treasurer Kitty King is completely blind. She has bright blue eyes that, unlike others, do not even pretend to see you, and instead seem to be staring at something far away, as if she is deep in thought, even as she speaks to you.
She can see nothing and hasn't for nine years. So she organizes her shoes and clothes to know what she is wearing. And when she shops, she does so by television.
"(QVC) describes everything," she said.
When she goes home tonight, King will still be unable to see the bed she sleeps in, the television, or the clothes she'll pick out the next morning.
As for me, eventually the mask came off and I could see.
Sensory Truama
An Hour Without Sight Capability Raises Awareness
By Lauren Glenn
The Ledger
WINTER HAVEN Wearing a black sleep mask, clutching a white cane in one hand and the arm of a stranger in the other, I spent nearly 45 minutes stumbling in sidewalk cracks, anxiously stepping into one of my greatest fears.
I was blind.
The borrowed cane I held glided over sidewalk cracks, asphalt and grass, and I frequently heard myself asking my guide, "Where are we now?"
The truth is, I have spent most of my 24 years unafraid: whitewater rafting, short-distance rock climbing, three hurricanes, two tropical storms, and a six-month stint in a New Orleans neighborhood where my home was only two blocks from a reputed crack house.
None of it scared me, at least not in a way that I did not find exhilarating.
But on Saturday morning, at Central Avenue and First Street in Winter Haven, guided by a legally blind woman and listening to the roaring of motorcycles and diesel-engine trucks rushing past me, I was scared.
"Did you hear that truck?" asked my guide, Joann Burwick, 38, who though legally blind, does have partial sight. "That truck just nearly hit us."
Vehicles turning right at crosswalks, not bothering to stop for pedestrians, plague blind people.
"People just don't stop like they should," Burwick said.
Which is why if you were passing through the intersection of Central Avenue and First Street on Saturday morning, you may have seen a man in dark glasses, holding a white cane and a sign that read:
"Stop for blind pedestrians, carrying a white cane or with a guide dog. It's the law in all 50 states."
Meanwhile, a dozen members of the National Federation of the Blind, some of them completely without sight, walked back and forth across the street, in their own attempt to make a statement: Consider the blind.
Most carried white canes similar to the one I held, and one woman, Eva Crowder, 34, was led by Cara, her 4-year-old seeing eye dog, a golden retriever-yellow Labrador mix.
And what of the keener sense of hearing that people so often say blindness brings? Apparently that is something acquired over time. Instead, I felt as if the rest of my senses had deteriorated when I put on the blindfold.
"Listen to the cars coming from the left of you," Joann kept reminding me. She said blind people rely on the sounds of passing cars to know when it is safe to cross the street.
"Can you feel them rushing past?" she asked.
I was probably never in serious danger. I had Joann to guide me, which is more than many blind people will ever have.
Joann, who lives in Lakeland, was a student at Polk Community College when blindness found her at the age of 19.
One morning, a school day, she woke up and noticed she was seeing funny.
Still, she got in her car and drove to her class in Winter Haven. But she bumped curbs -- several of them.
When she got out of her car, she placed a hand over her left eye and discovered she could see nothing out of the right.
Joann doesn't remember how she got home that day. An eye doctor told her he didn't know what the problem was, and they still don't, 19 years later.
She hates not being able to drive. She drove everywhere, for as long as she could, before she was told she couldn't anymore.
And because buses don't run after 6:30 p.m., "At night, you're stuck," she said. "You're just stuck."
At 10:30 a.m. -- the event started at 9 a.m. -- Winter Haven Mayor Mike Easterling showed up to read a resolution declaring October "National Federation for the Blind" month for the city.
Then, it was time to strap on his own mask and cross the street with Eva, the woman with the guide dog.
Most of my life, when I saw a person walking with a white cane, I assumed it was used solely for them to keep from falling down.
Instead, though, the white cane is very much about feeling what is right there in front of you, or next to you, and the longer you hold it and use it, the more you feel.
Run the cane over the asphalt street and you feel every bump and groove vibrating up toward your hand. Run it over a crosswalk and you feel smooth vibrations as the cane's roller passes over the lines that you cannot tell are painted white.
Then, as you cross the street, you feel an abrupt bump or jab and you know the cane has hit the curb. You step cautiously because if you trip, who knows what you may fall on top of.
Watch out for the lamp post, the street sign, the deep crack that has formed over time.
And especially, watch out for a car sitting on the crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn green.
"See that car right there?" Joann asks, and I laugh because no, I can't see it at all.
"Well, of course you can't see it," she said. "But it stopped on the crosswalk."
People don't realize that blind people depend on the crosswalk's painted lines to reassure them that they're not wandering into the street, as I nearly did several times.
When it was over, and I took my mask was off, I still found myself grasping at things as if I could not see them.
But for all my stumbling and anxiety Saturday morning, I cannot say that I truly experienced being blind.
I never had to learn to overcome a life of blindness like many of those who walked along beside me had.
Joann has returned to PCC and hopes to work in some form of public service, helping handicapped people or maybe as a social worker.
She studies with friends and is a member of an honor society, Pi Kappa Mu.
She is divorced, has a son who is 18, and she wants to find someone special.
"Make sure you put in there `single white female,' " she said with a laugh.
Most men worry that they will have to take care of her, she said. But that's not true.
"I can take care of myself," she said, looking more serious than she did most of the entire day.
But there's another reason that I did not really feel what blind people do every day: I was only without sight for less than an hour.
NFB treasurer Kitty King is completely blind. She has bright blue eyes that, unlike others, do not even pretend to see you, and instead seem to be staring at something far away, as if she is deep in thought, even as she speaks to you.
She can see nothing and hasn't for nine years. So she organizes her shoes and clothes to know what she is wearing. And when she shops, she does so by television.
"(QVC) describes everything," she said.
When she goes home tonight, King will still be unable to see the bed she sleeps in, the television, or the clothes she'll pick out the next morning.
As for me, eventually the mask came off and I could see.