Poll #2....

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence ~ Helen Keller

A person that is blind can do any of the activities listed in the poll: ski, golf, bowl, swim, appreciate art, horseback ride, go to the movies, go to an amusement park and go to a concert. Golf and appreciate art did not receive any votes. There is the United States Blind Golf Association and their moto is “you don’t have to see it to tee it!” There are many museums that have art that can be touched; art can also be described and there are blind photographers as well! Those that are visually impaired or totally blind can lead normal and fulfilling lives just as those who are sighted.

I do fun stuff with my sister Robin all of the time. We had the most fun when we got her to go on Space Mountain at Disneyland...I tricked her by telling her it was the Pirates of the Caribbean boat ride. I know…I know I should be ashamed of myself for lying to her. But I’m not! She had the ride of her life! LOL! Afterwards she said she had a blast! My sister and I go to the movies all the time, my 6 year old likes to sit next to my sister and describe to her what’s on the screen. It’s funny because my daughter Imani doesn’t quite have the whispering voice down so we always have to tell her to lower her voice! For the most part people don’t mind…however there was one incident that happened a couple of years after Robin went blind that was just heart wrenching. We had gone to see the Passion of the Christ. The movie was in a different languages, I think Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin so there were captions; I was trying to describe the movie and read the captions to Robin, although I was whispering into Robin’s ear what was going on some people near us got irritated…to see the tears stream down my sister’s face because she couldn’t enjoy something as simple as a movie was just so hard to bear. We later bought the DVD because it was descriptive and she was able to watch it at home. Luckily a lot of movies we see now are comedies and are loud anyway so noone notices me describing to Robin. She pretty much just follows the story line. The scenes that I have to describe are the non-verbal scenes. A group of us got together to go see Sex and the City…loved it! However, there was a lot of non-verbal scenes that I just refused to describe to my baby sister…so I just told her “by the sounds of what you hear, I’m sure you know what is going on!” She’d just say “yeah, I got it, no need for you to describe it!” Whew thank goodness!