Dear Smart Ass Cripple,
Why
do blind people wear sunglasses?
Eternally yours,
Always
Questioning
Dear
Always Questioning,
I
think blind people always wearing sunglasses is just some made-up Hollywood bull shit.
Because I’ve known a shitload of blind people throughout my long and prosperous
life and none of them ever wear sunglasses—not even when it’s sunny.
And
all that stuff about blind people feeling your face so they can get an idea
what you look like is some Hollywood bull shit, too. No blind person has ever asked
me if they could feel my face. I know that doesn’t necessarily prove my point.
There could be a variety of reasons why blind people wouldn’t want to feel my
particular face. Maybe they think they’re better off with a don’t-ask-don’t-tell
approach when it comes to my face. Or maybe they’ve been warned
by sighted people that exploring my face wouldn’t be a pleasant journey. But like I said, I’ve been around a lot of
blind people and some of them have been quite drunk. So you’d think the odds
are that at least one of them would’ve been drunk enough to ask to feel my face
by now. And I’ve never seen a blind person feeling up anybody else’s face
either. Maybe that’s not the kind of thing they do in public. I don’t know.
Another
thing I can tell you is that I’ve never met one blind person who admits to
taking acid. Every once in a while I get to know a blind person well enough to
where I feel comfortable asking them if they ever took acid. I ask them
that because I heard that the jazz musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who was blind
as hell, claimed he could see when he took acid. I imagine he saw things,
though probably what he saw weren’t the things that were actually in front of him at the time. So that’s why
I’ve asked a few blind people if they ever took acid because I want to know if
they saw things and what they saw. But so far none have fessed up that they
took acid.
Actually,
I take back what I said about sunglasses. I sort of know one blind person who wears sunglasses a lot. But
I don’t feel like I know him well enough to ask him why. I really ought to make the effort to get
to know him better, because he seems like the type of guy who probably took acid.
Dear
Smart Ass Cripple,
If
you could say one thing to your younger self, what would it be?
Warmly,
The Great Contemplator
Dear Contemplator,
If
I could say one thing to my younger self, it would definitely be, “What in the
hell possessed you to organize that cripple square dancing event?”
Way
back when, I used to organize social events for cripples. And for some reason,
I put together a square dance once. I don’t know what the hell came over me! I
know there’s nothing more cornball than square dancing. It’s the kind of
activity they’d have in a fucking nursing home.
I
have this fear that someday I’m going to be up for a seat on the Supreme Court or
something and somebody will come forward and reveal that I once organized a cripple square dance event and then everybody will think I must secretly be cornball as hell and I'll be sunk. All I can do is hope and pray that everyone
who showed up for my cripple square dance is dead.