Growing Up Blind

    I meant to post this several days ago, but you know how it is this time of year with the holidays and all. In any case, I figured I'd take the time to write a little about myself. As I stated in my first post, I've been blind since birth.

    My Mom was six and a half months pregnant when she had me. I was born weighing one and a half pounds. I was eleven inches long and my lungs weren't fully developed. I was immediately put on oxygen, but I was still in a lot of danger. My mom was informed not to get her hopes up. I might not pull through and if I did, there might be a lot of complications. I could either become brain damaged or mentally challenged. The other option, which was probably the best that anyone could hope for, was that I became completely blind.
    I was in the hospital for eight months. When I was finally able to go home, I was accompanied by a portable oxygen machine. Due to my premature birth, I was very sickly as a child. I didn't let that stop me. I fought hard through each illness until I was nine. Despite everything, I was a normal child.
    Some blind people grow up having to be told they couldn't see. Others had to figure it out for themselves. None of that was the case for me. I always knew I was different. It was completely normal for me to have my Mom try to show me what colors were while everyone else around me had know trouble seeing them.
    I never asked why I couldn't see. Instead, I soaked in whatever knowledge anyone tried to give me. I loved exploring anything I could get my hands on. I was fascinated with listening to short audiobooks and watching TV.
    It's funny, I have been asked, why do I say "watching TV" when I clearly can't see it. I grew up hearing that just because I lacked vision, that didn't mean I had to say different words that meant generally the same thing. For me, my way of seeing TV was to hear it. If I said I wanted to look at something or "let me see it", I felt it with my hands. I even used to feel the shapes of peoples' faces but as I got older, I found it embarrassing, thinking people might feel weirded out or uncomfortable.
    It was the same for whatever colors I might like. If I thought something sounded pretty, I went with it. It was what I knew. In fact, thanks to my family, my favorite color is a bright yellow. When my much older brother and sister were in school and I was little, they used to sing: "we all live in the yellow submarine." The song grew on me and the color became mine.
    In school, I usually had a teacher who would pull me aside to teach me braille, (the method in which a blind person reads), and how to do simple math. When I got a little older, I changed schools, attending the new school with another blind  girl who became one of my best friends. Having a friend who was blind made all the difference.
    I got really lonely at times, although I didn't know it then. I was used to playing by myself, having two siblings who were a great deal older than me. My closest friends before my classmate were my twin cousins. They were a year younger than me and learned early on how to guide  me. This is called sighted guide, where the person who is blind has to hold onto the one who can see by the elbow so as not to trip over uneven ground or steps. Many mistakes were made and I gained some bruises and scrapes by sometimes walking too fast and not being warned ahead of time that I was nearing something that could hurt me.
    There were times I got a little more than a small bruise. I was once run head on into a pole. Luckily, I didn't break anything. I was very wary of letting others guide me after that. Another time I busted open my top lip in the gym. I was taught to always feel with one hand whenever I was bending down or getting up, but that day, I was more focused on other things and not paying attention. A similar incident occurred a year later, leaving a scar across the upper bridge of my nose.

    It wasn't all bad. Next post, I'll talk about some of the hijinks I got up to as a kid. I said above that I didn't let my blindness stop me. Had my Mom known all that I did back then, she would have had a heart attack. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Thuy Trang and Trini Mean To Me

     Growing up in the nineties was interesting for many reasons. Cell phones were being introduced, computers were slowly becoming more popular, and freestyle music was hitting its peak. For kids all across America that had a television, a much bigger event was taking place.      Mighty Morphin Power Rangers exploded onto our TV screens. It was new, full of action, had awesome rock music, and five teenagers who could turn into superheroes. There was a color and a personality that represented each child's hero or heroine.      For a large number of people it was green, when he finally arrived on the scene. Others chose white, when he came later, though I personally suspect, had more to do with the fact that mostly everyone liked Jason David Frank who played them both, rather than the change in color. Still others preferred red, while many went for blue and black. A lot of girls loved pink. Most guys loved her too, but I tend to believe it was because they thought Amy Jo Johnson was
Read more

Yea! I'm Not Insane, But I Blame My Husband

     If you've stumbled across this website and looked at the overall title of this blog, you've probably already guessed, I'm blind, have been since birth. I'll write more on that later. For now, I want to talk about something that interests me very much. It'll explain the title of this first post.      I guess it's true what they say, some people just never stop playing with toys. I happen to be one of them. I would however like to say that this resurgence into collecting is all my husband's fault! As a child, I played with baby dolls. Not your standard, use your own imagination, and they'll do or say anything you like. Not barbies that you had to dress and create fantastic hair styles for and pretend they went out with only the most sophisticated guys. For me, all of those were as boring as it got. No, all my dolls had to make some kind of noise, whether it was crying or talking, laughing or sneezing!      Yes, I once owned a doll that sneezed and cou
Read more

The Boy Who Lived

So much for writing more frequently! Ah, well. I got busy watching things and couldn't think of a topic I wanted to talk about. This post will be another short one. In fact, my next few posts will be short, at least until I can get used to writing on here more often. I wanted to briefly touch on a favorite book series of mine that I didn't get into until it was almost over. The series, if you couldn't tell from the title of this post, is called Harry Potter. Most of you will probably have heard of it, not least because of the films that were made of it. In any case, it's such a good read. The further you go in the books, the darker it gets. It's about a boy who discovers he's a wizard and has to go to school to learn to use magic. He has many trials throughout his stay at Hogwarts, because he's mostly to curious for his own good. He learns allot of valuable lessons along the way though. He goes from being an innocent boy who knows nothing about his past to a
Read more