Well This Is Awkward
Have you ever been on a phone call, and realized after prattling on for five solid minutes, that oh wow, my phone is dead! Super dead. How long ago did it die, I wonder? Or my personal favourite in-person blind equivalent, where you are talking to someone in a lineup, or a hallway, and (if you're like me) you're likely nervously chattering or foolishly jesting away, only to realize at some point, that you are speaking to air. The person either walked away or was swept off in the crowd. Regardless, you wonder with a cringe who might've just witnessed this strange phenomenon.
Well, March 18 is fast approaching, marking Awkward Moments Day. In celebration of the cringes and magnificent stumbles of life, this blog post is sharing a few awkward stories from some of our Blind Beginnings mentors, whose sight ranges from low vision to fully blind. Because sometimes, you just gotta dust off, and laugh at all the wildness that life brings.
Our first story comes from Randi, who shares a story from a day at work. She notes that she was working in a retail store and earlier in her shift had encountered a customer and interacted with them for a time before heading on her way. A little while later, while dealing with a different matter, she rounded a corner and encountered this customer again and from the customer's mouth came the words, "Are you blind or what?"
Randi takes a moment to explain that aside from her glasses, there is not a lot of obvious visual indicators of her blindness, so it's very possible the customer might not have expected what was coming next."Yes I am," Randi responded, with a blunt honesty, to the surprise of the customer.
"It was more so awkward for him than for me," Randi notes with a slight laugh.
The customer then questioned her about whether she was telling the truth and asked her such questions as, when you go to the movies, where do you sit? Randi reaffirmed that yes, she does in fact have a visual impairment, but that she also had work to do, and politely carried on with her tasks.
The next two stories come from Jill, a mentor who currently has no residual vision, but who shares a story from when she had low vision, and another from after she lost her sight.
Back when Jill still had low vision, she was heading into her eye doctor's office for a checkup. She describes the office building as one of those glass-fronted buildings with one set of glass front doors, and then another inner set to get into the reception area. She was very light-sensitive at the time, and it was a very sunny day with light reflecting off the windows. She was also not a cane-user at this time. She made it through the first door without a hitch. However, when she attempted the second door, she thought the door was on the right, not directly in front of her, (again all glass and way to bright), so she turned right and proceeded to walk straight into a glass wall.
"It hurt and was super embarrassing because literally everyone inside and outside saw what happened," she shares. And once she did make it through the second door, she had to walk past everyone to go sit in the waiting room. She notes that her dad was also there at the time, and felt bad because he didn't realize she couldn't see where the door actually was.
In her next story, post sight loss, Jill tells about a day when she was traversing her university campus, this time with a cane. The path she was walking down had some left-over construction gear in the middle of the path, that she didn't know was there. The construction gear included some traffic cones with caution tape wrapped around them.
"Given my luck, my cane naturally got tangled in the caution tape. Then of course, so did my legs." She explains that she was in a hurry and quickly became annoyed by this predicament, kicking one of the cones over and across the pathway. As she worked on untangling herself further, and becoming more frustrated, a girl behind her shyly asked if she needed help. Realizing she was in fact not alone, Jill figured this girl had just seen her entire angry outburst at the traffic cone. Embarrassed, Jill quickly said no thanks, and hurried away from the spot.
Our final story of the post comes from me, Keisha, who has some light-perception, but not much else. One of my hobbies is acting for the stage, and I've been performing in my university's theatre department for the entire five years that I've been going to school here. About a year ago I was in a small one-act production. This particular production was being featured in an annual festival that my university puts on called Director's Festival. This is where students in the fourth-year directing class have the opportunity to direct actual productions that will eventually be performed for a real-deal audience.
Now, the class of fourth-year directors happened to be people I'd had classes with and performed with for ages, and we were all pretty familiar. This means that they are also pretty familiar with my visual impairment and how it impacts my ways as an actress. During one of our earlier rehearsals, my show partner and I were practicing our entrance where we walked through the doorway on one side of the stage and across the entire stage to some seats we were meant to sit. As I had not had a lot of time to familiarize myself with the set yet, and I was still new with the lines and everything else, I was a bit distracted as we made our entrance, and accidentally veered, right into a set-piece. Anyone who knows my rehearsal style knows that I would rather us ignore my little blind stage mishaps and just move on to improve my work or else, let's have a good laugh about it. On this day, half the room were my fourth-year director friends who know me quite well, and on the other half were fellow actors who did not. The moment I made impact with the set-piece, my initial reaction was a quick pang of embarrassment followed by me laughing it off.
The most hilarious part of it all though was how you could tell my friends apart from those who don't know me well, because the half of the room who are friends of mine burst into laughter with me, while the other half gasped in horror. It was pretty awkward alright, but also classic comedy.
So now that we've shared some awkward stories with you, hopefully you're ready to take on Awkward Moments day with all the cringey pzazz!
by Keisha