Thunder Dog - Michael Hingson [72]
Let me begin by saying that you have put me in a very unusual position. Ordinarily people want to argue the other way. Most of them say that it’s ridiculous to say that blindness can be reduced to the level of a nuisance since it is obviously a major tragedy involving severe problems and extreme limitations not to mention emotional distress and psychological disturbance. You however deny that it is even a nuisance and ask me to come up to the line and prove that it is! Fair enough, I shall try. The very fact that you can raise such a question shows how much progress we have made. I doubt that anybody could have done it as recently as twenty years ago.
To begin with, even if we were to concede, and I don’t concede it as I will shortly indicate, that there is absolutely nothing which can be done with sight which can’t be done just as easily and just as well without it, blindness would still be a nuisance as the World is now constituted. Why? Because the World is planned and structured for the sighted. This does not mean that blindness need be a terrible tragedy, or that the blind are inferior, or that they cannot compete on terms of equality with the sighted. And we of the National Federation of the Blind, for instance, affirm that the ordinary blind person can compete on terms of equality with the ordinary sighted person, if he gets proper training and opportunity. We know that the average blind person can do the average job in the average place of business and do it as well as his sighted neighbor. In other words, the blind person can be as happy and lead as full a life as anybody else.
For an exact analogy, consider the situation of those who are left-handed. The world is planned and structured for the right-handed. Thus, left-handedness is a nuisance and is recognized as such, especially by the left-handed. Even so, the left-handed can compete on terms of equality with the right-handed since their handicap can be reduced to the level of a mere physical nuisance.
If you are not left-handed (I am not. I am a “normal”), you may not have thought of the problems. A left-handed person ordinarily wears his wristwatch on his right arm. Not to do so is awkward and causes problems. But the watch is made for the right-handed. Therefore, when it is worn on the right arm, the stem is toward the elbow, not the fingers. The watch is inconvenient to wind, a veritable nuisance.
Then there are butter knives. Many of them are so constructed that the left-handed must either spread the butter with the back of the knife, awkwardly use the right hand, or turn the wrist in a most uncomfortable way—nuisances all. But not of the sort to ruin one’s psyche or cause nightmares, just annoying.
The garden variety can opener (the one you grip in your left hand and turn with your right, that is, if you are “normal”) is made for “normals.” If you hold it in your right hand and turn it with your left (as any respectable left-hander is tempted to do), you must either clumsily reach across it to get at the handle or turn it upside down so that the handle is conveniently located, in which case it won’t work at all.
Likewise, steak knives are usually serrated to favor the right-handed. Scissors, eggbeaters, ice cream dippers, and other utensils are also made for the same group.
So are ordinary school-desk classroom chairs. How many have you seen with the arms on the left side? Of course, a few enlightened schools and colleges (with proper, present-day concern for the well-being of minorities) have two or three left-handed chairs in each of their classrooms, but this is the exception rather than the rule. It succeeds only in earning the ill will