FRIENDS

 

When I started this blog my goal was, and still is to  help bridge the gap of understanding between the world of the blind and the sighted. The best way to do this most times is with humor. Even so now and then there comes a little bump in the road that just doesn’t seem funny. Just now I am standing in the middle of that little bump “looking” for balance. Sometimes it becomes too easy for someone like me to assume that a friend just plain LOVES being with me, strolling the streets in the city and roaming the malls until absolutely everything on a to/do list is finished. Such complacency to the reality is always a shock when I find out I can truly run someone ragged and make them totally crazy. So what does one do when a friend says “I can’t go out tomorrow?”  First of all, you totally get the fact that you are not the center of this person’s universe and that they have other more pressing obligations pending. You truly understand as you kick yourself in the bottom with your foot … if you can still do that. But then the person says: “but I will still do anything you need done if I can just do it for you.” That’s the bump I’m tripping over. Suddenly I realize how much more quickly a person can get things done without a blind person and a dog slowing them down. Today I have decided to try one more time to make new rules to make it easier for my friends as well as myself.

My new rules:

~Do not ask a person to go shopping, to lunch, to the post office, to stop by the church, to the bank, the drug store, the vet, and the grocery store all in one day. … and then read my mail.

 ~Learn to pay my bills on-line instead of having someone helping me with checks.

Remember to label hand creams, face creams, shampoos, conditioners, cleaning products, and medications so as not to keep asking someone to read the labels over and over.     

Now, some of the amazing things my friends do:

~Take me shopping, to lunch, to the post office, the church, the drug store, the bank, the vet, and the grocery store.

~Read mail and help write checks.

~Drive a hundred miles to visit with my Mom and sometimes one hundred and fifty miles to see my friend in Charlotte.

~Call me and try to persuade me to do lunch; doesn’t take much persuasion.

~Call and ask me to a movie.

~Call and invite Vivi over for a play date with their dog.

~Invite Vivi and me to go for a walk,

~Invite me to spend a weekend,

~ Save plastic bags for me so I can look after Vivi’s doggy needs.

~Ask if they can pick me up for a party.

~Bring me tomatoes from the Farmer’s market or their gardens without being asked,

~Help me with a web site that is not user friendly, if they can,

Go driving in the rain to another grocer just because I didn’t like the cheese in WallMart,

~Give me a hug when I don’t deserve one,

And just recently, rush from the train station to my house in five o’clock Raleigh traffic to retrieve my dog’s harness and get back to the station before the train leaves.

 

Most of all, these are not people who feel sorry for me; they are truly my friends. So, I hope for all you readers, blind and sighted, that you: 

~Have people like these special ones in your life,

That you don’t become sensitive when they just don’t have time,

~That you don’t take them for granted nor overuse their generosity,

~That when you think you have nothing to give in return you give them appreciation, understanding, a listening ear, spiritual support,

~That you thank God for them,

~And you tell them often they are loved, and mean it.

 

Did somebody say something about a bump?