Well, it’s September again, which happens to be my favorite month! I love this month, in part because it’s the birth month I share with my beautiful daughter, Lindsey, and also because it signifies that bearable Texas temps are just around the corner. Lastly, and most importantly for my readers…it’s National Guide Dog Month, so this first month’s posts are all dedicated to my precious guide dog, Wella.
After being an avid cane user for more than 30 years, I made the decision last September to apply to a guide dog school. Reactions of friends and acquaintances ranged from “What took you so long?” to “Why’d you get a dog? You never needed one before.”
To address these, it’s important to start near the beginning:
At the age of twelve, I’m facing vision loss. I find myself confronted by the fact that some people who were previously familiar to me are suddenly uncomfortable approaching me due to their hypersensitivity to my disability. In order to maintain my quality of life, I determine I am now responsible to make the first move in social situations, to be approachable and initiate conversation; It is imperative that I break through my own adolescent self-consciousness and learn to reach out to others in a way that sets them so at ease with my disability that they set aside their preconceptions and get to know and view me as a person, not a “walking disability.”
Hey, adolescence is tough enough without acquiring a disability in the midst of it! I just want to fit in and be “like everyone else.”
But I’m not. I’m a novelty…so I might as well make the most of it.
As a teenager, I use my novelty status to my best advantage to gain peer approval. Faking it ’til I make it, I do my dead-level best to break every imaginable blindness stereotype: I have very long hair, about 8” below my waist; I occasionally dress more provocatively than I should, to prove to my peers that my level of sexuality is comparable to theirs, and develop a robust swearing habit (which I unfortunately maintain to this day) to gain “a little street cred.”
At sixteen, I’m doing all I can to downplay my blindness and pass for somewhat sighted as often as possible because…society views blindness as unattractive, undesirable and unintelligent. Anything representing that stereotype is a big negative.
Downplaying my disability protects me from the inadequacies it represents and the vulnerability I feel at the thought of being deemed an outsider.
Guide dogs are loving, well-trained, intelligent creatures, and are most deserving of the obvious respect and admiration shown to them by the public…However, “Obvious” is the operative here.
At this point, guide dogs are fine for other people. Right now, I want to get as far away from “obvious” as possible! “Obvious” is too much for my fragile young ego to handle! It just brings me face-to-face with my own perceived lack of attractiveness, desirability and intelligence.
To be continued…
Copyright (C) 2014 Donna Anderson. All rights reserved.
