The blind lead us all

It happened again yesterday. It seems like every time I’m having a bad day, feeling sorry for myself, something comes along to remind me of what’s real.

What’s real is that it’s one hundred and eleven steps from the subway exit to my front steps. I know because I counted them last night after meeting yet another of the thousands of blind people in the city. I cannot for the life of me figure out how they do it? I know people, sighted people, people with no handicaps of any kind whatsoever unless you are counting growing up with an abusive father, who will not take the subway. Yet, every day nearly, I see a person or two persons with their white canes and their intense attitude standing on the platform. There’s a woman who lives a building or two down from mine who takes the train downtown every morning. It’s hard enough to figure out the trains and the changes due to construction and to decipher the unintelligible announcements on the speakers and get to where you want to go, but to have to do it in total darkness seems to me to a be supreme human accomplishment, but when you ask them, the unsighted say that the city gives them greater freedom than living in any other place would. Here (NYC) they can go out shopping or to a park or to the library or to a concert without any need for a ride from a sighted driver. They get on a bus, or a subway and off they go.
Still, I am in awe.