Good for you for working!

Much like riding the bus, one never knows what will occur while waiting in line for a grilled cheese.   Lunch is always a mad dash to grab something and consume it within the allotted 30 minutes (if actually taking a lunch break).   The tiny eatery in the lobby of the building I work in is always chaotic.   An ill-planned design that doesn’t allow for a flow of people.   There is always a bottleneck at the salad bar, grill, and cashier which literary are located in the exact same spot.   It’s tough enough to navigate the waves of hungry people, but with a cane it sometimes is a nightmare.   One wants to slip in and out without attracting attention to what you’re choosing to eat or bringing on conversation that will eat up the precious time you have to eat your lunch away from the pings of e-mails and drones of conference calls.  

I seldom slip in-and-out of the tiny eatery without drawing some sort of comment.   Typically it’s someone cringing as they realized they just budged in front of a blind woman or nearly took me out, while they were texting and not paying attention (ironically I am rarely the actual cause of any accidental bumps due to humanity’s obsessive need to check Facebook, tweet, or text instead of looking where they are going).   Today was a “normal” day, while standing in line a woman gasped when she noticed my cane, “Oh dear, sorry I almost budged in front of you.   That would be extra bad.”   Somehow my visual impairment makes rude behavior extra rude.  

After a few moments of awkward standing in line conversation, that woman and I found ourselves waiting at the grill.   “You know my brother and sister-in-law worked with the blind up north,” a prideful smile beamed.   I grimaced thinking how I only wanted a stupid grilled cheese and not a conversation about my blindness.  She went on to explain how they hired an organization that worked with the blind to package napkin/utensils for the cafeteria-style restaurant they had.   “Yes, they made a lot of money on the blind.   Just proves that those that can work, can work.”   There was this deep sincerity in her voice over what she felt was the humanitarian efforts of who brother and sister-in-law in getting the blind to work.   Before she slipped away with hamburger in hand she looked at me, “You work here?”   I nodded.   “GOOD FOR YOU!   GOOD FOR YOU FOR WORKING!”   She explained.

This isn’t an isolated incident.   Most people are rather amazed by me, not because I am truly impressive but because in their world there are no blind people like me.   No blind people like me actually translates to no blind people.   I only appear impressive, because I am the only one.   Take away my cane and I am your typical “normal” person.   There is nothing impressive about me be-bopping around the city I live in.   My Master’s Degree is no great achievement.   I going to work each day is boring.   Each aspect of my life quickly become mundane and “normal.”   However, add my cane and suddenly me walking from the bus stop to my office causes people to randomly say, “Good for you” or “God Bless You” as I walk down the street.

Because there are few blind people that are visible in the world around the sighted world, it sets a low bar.   A very low bar.   Therefore the idea of someone with a visual impairment simply holding down a job somehow springs forth a desire to applaud by some of the sighted world.   One would think how lovely it would be to have the world have low expectations meaning you do the bare minimum and somehow impress.   That’s not always true.   Low expectations can be crippling for individuals with disabilities.  While some become impressed by us simply getting out of bed and wearing matching clothes, there are others that discount what we can bring to the table automatically assuming, “she can’t do that.”

My first lesson in, “she can’t do that,” was at age six.   Newly diagnosed with my eye condition, RP, and declared legally blind, I was embarking on a new world that defined me on my disability rather rather than on my ability beyond the physical.   My mother notified the public school I attended.   In the age of IDEA, an Act that supported students with disabilities with services to be successful in academic pursuits, my tiny school in Western New York told my mother that I couldn’t make it in mainstream education and needed to go to a special school.   With some determination and support from the New York State Commission for the Blind my mother fought the school securing my place and services.  

The school begrudgingly took me as a student, not letting me forget that I was different.   Many teachers made comment openly expressing their low expectations for my ability.   The biggest slap in the face was when, at graduation, my school bestowed upon me the “Against all Odds Award,” for graduating from High School despite the school saying I couldn’t succeed in mainstream education.   What should have been a proud moment was tainted with my school reminding me what they thought my abilities were.

The truth was, I was no better than my classmates.   I only graduated 18^th in a class of 60.   I was a normal teenager participating in drama, sports, clubs, and community service activities.   I was normal in my group of friends; the preppy good girls that could be looked upon to be decorating and organizing school dances or coordinating food drives.   There was really no difference between my closest friends; Heather, Pilar, and Britany, except I was blind.   Pilar graduate first in our class a year a hold of schedule.   She turned seventeen two weeks before graduation and, perhaps, was my deserving of the against all Odds award.   After all she graduated young and early, not the norm.  However, she did’ have a disability.   The bar wasn’t low for here to appear it impressive to simply graduate from high school.

As Heather, Pilar, and Brittany grew up nobody would ever stare at them saying, “GOOD FOR YOU!   GOOD FOR YOU FOR WORKING!”

All from unexpected human interaction

There are days when the overcrowded bus is almost too much to handle.   After a long day at a stressful job with voices crowding my head the last thing I want to do is walk 10 minutes to the Transit Mall (funny store when I first moved to Long Beach I thought it was an actual mall where the buses happened to gather, boy was I severally disappointed on my first trip downtown to discover it’s simple a clever name for a bus depot) to climb on to a crowded bus mixed with grouchy people heading home from work, teenagers heading to pre-curfew hours of freedom, old women with their personal pull shopping carts that take up the first part of the bus, and that always crying baby.   Sometimes it’s more than I can handle, but other days it’s exactly what I needed.

A life spent riding and/or waiting for the bus can bring one untold adventures!   As someone with a visual impairment I don’t have the luxury of sliding into my own car, listening to my own radio, and driving straight to my destination without any human interaction.   While I often long for that after a long day of human interaction, the bus forces me to have unexpected interactions that those not forced to ride miss out on.   These interactions can be joyful, sad, laughter inducing, painful, nurturing….etc.   No matter the emotions triggered there is one common thread; they are memorial.   There are many days that I step off the bus shaking my head either good, bad, or annoyed at what just occurred.

Today was one of those days.   I had a particularly hectic day with lots of people pulling me in multiple directions.   I kind of felt like Stretch Armstrong on his final leg with four children tugging at both arms and legs.   Crawling onto the bus I just sighed a little.   An older man with scruffy ZZ Top-style white beard, Navy Veteran hat, and red t-shirt that proclaimed himself, “chick magnet” sat across from me.   The man gazed at me for a minute or two.  I crossed my legs almost feeling the question coming before he said it, “Are you blind all the way or some of the way?”   It’s a pretty typical question for a legally blind person, especially if we’re not wearing sunglasses and carrying a tin of pencils for sale.  “Part of the way,” I said telling him about my vision.

Instantly he found a sense of companionship with me, telling me about the surgery he had for his detached retina.  He went on to tell me that he was a patient at one of the hospitals I serve.   I told him I worked for that agency.   He smiled and said, “I know you all have been in the news, but I want to tell you I have gone to the hospital here in Long Beach for a long time.   They treat me like a king!”   He went on to describe the services and care he receives from one of the facilities I work with.   I could feel a sense of overpowering joy and inspiration.   He was why I do what I do.  

In a ten minute bus ride, before he got off at his stop, the bus had given me a gift through the scruffy bear "chick magnet" old man (who knew).   The bus reminded me of the purpose in my career and the role I play serving/helping others.  It reminded me of the type of person I am and strive to be.   I am, at my core, one that nurtures and cares for others.   That's where I find my strength.   That doesn't make me selfless, but a little selfish because I'm feeding my sense of self in this.   He both reminded me of my purpose, while giving me a much needed jolt of positive energy that my nurturing ego needed.   If I didn’t ride the bus and simply hid in my car driving home emotionally exhausted I would have missed that surge of energy and reminder of who I am, how the world sees me, and how I fit into this world from my unexpected human interaction.   Moment’s like this make me happy that I have to climb onto a crowded bus that is either too stuffy or hot or with artic air conditioned temps.  

For those of us that are forced into unexpected human interaction, it’s an opportunity to step outside of ourselves through connection.   We are social beings.   Social Learning Theory discusses how we develop and process through interactions with others.   They teach us about ourselves, the world around us, and how to fit/interact with that world.   At 32-years-old you think I was done developing, but a life riding the bus says otherwise.

How Blind People Dress

It was a typical Saturday nearly a year ago.   I sat on the bus cruising down Atlantic towards Bixby Knolls.   It was a five minute walk to the first stop, followed by a fifteen minute wait, then a fifteen minute bus ride, with at another stop, and finally a twenty minute bus ride to my final stop.   It was about an hour journey to go what in a car took about fifteen minutes.   In the extra 45 minutes of donated time to my weekly trip to improve class, I learned something new about me; I didn’t dress like a blind person.

How does a blind person dress?   It was a stunning realization at age 31.   I had spent 25 years as a blind person, diagnosed with RP and declared legally blind at age six.  For 25 years I learned a great deal about being blind.   A majority of my lessons was how to adapt a sighted world that I inhabited to my vision loss, so that I could overcome my blindness by self-acceptance through modification.   In those classes on braille, mobility lessons to use the white cane, training on technology that allowed me to more easily access tools for education and employment, and other skill based learning activities there was one lesson missing; how to dress for the blind.   That Saturday morning I learned how the blind were supposed to be dressed by a middle-age woman with hoop gold earrings and a top two-sizes too small.

Sitting in the front row of the overcrowded bus a loud voice called out to the beat of snapping fingers, ”Hey you, you blind?”   I was slightly taken back.   Her question felt more like an accusations.  I could feel the burning shine of an interrogation lamp as if she was the hard detective ready to pounce on me.  “Yes…yes I am,” I winced, waiting for what would come next.

“Really?   Girl you don’t look blind.   You go to be playing,” her accusations continued.   Sitting there, I thought do I need to prove myself?   Do I offer to take an eye exam?   Could you imagine she suddenly pulled out an eye chart to administer an eye test to prove me legit?   “You are all coordinated and shit.   Your clothes match and your hair is done.”   With that statement it all came clear to these less-than-20/20 eyes.   In her eyes individuals with visual impairments cannot dress.   I stuck out to her, not because of the white cane, my constant companion, but because I didn’t look the way she thought a blind person should look.

She imagined the blind with clashing colors; perhaps, poke-a-dot pink pants with green stripped top, and lop sided ponytail.   A blind woman with perfectly straightened hair, blue jeans, pink sparkle top, white cardigan, matching jewelry, and matching sandals.   In nobody’s book I would be the fashion-forward diva, but in her world my ability to simply match my clothing and comb my hair severely broke her conception of the blind that it caused her to question my authenticity as a blind person.

I sat back on the bus looking around at everyone else’s clothing wondering about my own perceptions.   Did I assume she was low class, because of her two-sizes-too-small top and oversized hoop earrings?   Did I assume the young man with baggy jeans matches with a black tank top was a thug?   Was the woman wearing a heavy coat over skinny jeans with sunken eyes a drug addict?   Could that man dressed in khakis and polo shirt be a member of the young Republicans?   Did I assume much about their lives and who they were based on their dress?  

How we dress is often a costume, telling the world a story about us.   Think about Halloween and the costumes we wear; princess, cowboy, rapper, punk rocker, hobo….etc.   These customs inform others who we are and not just on Halloween, but each day.   Every time I sit on the bus I gaze around looking at the other passengers wondering who they are and where they are going.   I draft storylines in my head.   All of this is based on how they look and what this world has told me how/what people that look like that should be.  

It’s always refreshing to have those pre-conceived notions shatters, the truth rock breaking through the deluded stain glass window of perception.   Perhaps, that guy in baggy jeans with matching black tank top was a young do-gooder on his way to volunteer at the Homeless shelter, that “drug addict” woman was a teacher merely wrapped up with sunken eyes due to a nasty cold, the polo shirt guy was a drug dealer, and the woman in that two-sizes-too-small shirt was a well-to-do business woman that simply enjoyed rockin’ her body to the world.   They could be exactly what I thought and what I thought they could not be.

That day on the bus I not only learned how blind people are supposed to dress like but I saw the truth behind how we see others.   Each of us have images in our heads of how certain types of people should look.   Sometimes those images are true, but 90 percent of the time if we truly open ourselves up to difference in our perceptions of those that are different from us we may clear our own vision.   I applaud that woman for owning her perceptions and bravely exposing them.   That day she taught me how this blind girl's vision can be obstructed by perception. 

And then there's me...

I often joke that my biography will be entitled, “While I was riding the busy,” because I spend some much time on the bus.   It’s become my second, dare I say first home.   Not only am on a first name basis with most of the drivers, but they often comment on my hair.   “I see someone slept in today,” one driver jest the other day due to my ponytail (a tell-tale sign that I opted for extra sleep time v extra make myself pretty time).   Each morning is filled with friendly exchanges ‘til I sit in my seat facing the driver, pop in my Bluetooth, and attempt to zone out to music.   Although zoning out on the bus never truly works, because it is such a fascinating world that easily grabs one out of the zone shaking them violently back into the reality around them; bus world.

In bus world all is possible.   In bus world a simple trip to work can provide an entire day’s dose of drama.   There are screaming matches on cell phones.   There are sassy passengers, often older women, which have solved all the world’s problems between stop one and ten.   There are teenagers trying to prove how adult they are by inserting vulgarity into every other word in their sentence.   There are sometimes a mixtures of individuals ravaged by unchecked mental illness having entire dialogues with the voices in their heads (sometimes far more interesting than the other conversations one cannot help to ease drop on).  There are homeless people sleeping, sometimes they only place they can safely do so for an hour or two.   There are moms’ with several children that always seem to have their daily meltdown while the bus is in transit.  There are people desperately searching for additional change in pockets or their purse in order to pay for the next bus trip.  There are nurses just off a 12-hour shift heading home; tired and, often, annoyed by someone on the bus breaking some unwritten bus etiquette.  There are college students hoping to make it to class on time.   There are those eco-friendly young professionals that have delayed the bus an extra five minutes, while they struggle to mount their bike on the bus’s bike rack.   Then there’s me in this collage of people from various backgrounds and experiences that collide on the bus.  

Who am I?   I’m another typical fixture of the world of public transportation; the individual with the disability.   The person other passengers are supposed to give up their seat for on the bus; although, it never happens ‘til the driver says something.   I am legally blind; therefore, I should not drive.   I don’t say I cannot, because I could; therefore, I can.   I can totally drive.   I can walk down to my partner’s car, slide into the front seat, and turn the key.   I can do it.   However, I shouldn’t, because there it is highly likely that I would cause an accident hurting myself, the car, a person, or a defenseless tree or phone pole.   Poor phone pole.  

So, I do not drive.   I like to pretend it’s a choice.   I choose not to drive to keep you safe, but really isn’t not a choice at all.   I’m pretty sure the local PD would have something to say about me driving.  Could you imagine me getting out of the driver’s side and whipping out my cane or even driving down the road with my cane hanging out the window?   What a sight (pun totally intended)!

With that I find myself at the bus.   Each day.   Every day.   For my colleagues a quick fifteen minute drive to the office from where I live.   For me an hour walk/bus ride to my final destination, a journey repeated again at the end of the day.   This is a truth for those like myself that are unable to drive due to disability.   Everyone takes longer.   It’s an entire process to get from point A to B.  A simple journey to the grocery store, work, or doctor’s office can involve waiting up to an hour for buses, riding for thirty minutes, transferring to another bus, and/or walking long distances only to repeat it again to return home.  

Don’t want to be all complaints, because I’m lucky to have the level of public transportation I do.   Growing up as the blind girl in a small town I had ZERO public transportation options.   To go anywhere involved walking or securing someone to drive me.   Sometimes it felt like friends resented me for that, because sometimes inviting me meant they would have to pick me up.   As an adult I am lucky to live in a community that has public transportation that allows me to unburden those around me, so I can get where I need to be (well, as long as there is a bus route there).  

The other benefit, not always seen, is how riding the public transportation has allowed me to widen my vision to the world around me.   The bus experience has given me greater insight on myself and how the world sees me and others with disabilities.   This is what this blog is about.   It’s using the lens of my experience riding the bus to tell the story of disability in America.   I hope you’ll drop in a token or two and join me for the journey.