Day 55: Sunday Confessions

Just when you think you knew it all about living with a person who is blind then think again...I know nothing Sansei! 

Picture of The blindmans wife and the Blindman at a recent wedding

Yesterday taking my daughter to a cake decorating class one of the instructors and I were talking about different techniques of applying icing...riveting I know! (Insert winkie face here) I offered to show her some of the creations I had made and proceeded to tell her this blog address so she could see the pics I posted yesterday of the cakes I had made in the past. She had a little giggle when I told her the web address was theblindmanswife. 

Explaining that it wasn't satirical that I actually was a Blind mans wife she looked at me and said "Wow that's amazing...I am a special needs teacher as my second job and I have worked with blind girl in the past". The lady continued to admire my cakes (blush moment) and then with a pause she said something that I will never ever forget! 

"Do you want to know the one thing I learnt about blindness while I was teaching this little girl?" My thoughts went to a million different learning experience she may have had...cane training...Braille...how to successfully guide a blind person through a crowd...how to use a magnifying glass without causing RSI...how to use screen-reading technology....how a blind person pours a drink...the cure for Retinitus Pigmentosa!!! Nope none of the above.

Looking at her I beckon for her to tell me her knowledge breakthrough. She continued with this next sentence that had me stunned...and feeling a little bit stupid! "Isn't it weird that mostly everyone calls people with some degree of blindness Visually Impaired?"  My response was, I am sure, a little amusing to her because of my black and white demeanour about her question/statement. "Well that's what everyone who has impaired vision is called right?"

Taking a sighing breath she said "Just pause and think about what the English language literal meaning is of describing someone as Visually Impaired. It literally means to you that person looks impaired...perhaps that they look like their face is melted" pulling at her checks she uses her hands to stretch down her face making it somewhat look unattractive. Then with a smile she says "The correct term to use to describe a person with limited sight is Vision Impaired!" Because of course I should have known this for TWENTY FIVE FLIPPING YEARS!!! 

My vision Impaired Man very attractive in his unattractive but fun Sherpas hat 

It's almost taboo in the community of the Vision Impaired...like a person giving a description of a person with colour...I don't think you are supposed to see a persons colour anymore...or describing a persons gender...is that even appropriate these days...I am so confused I just don't know...but this one fact about the English language I should have been all over....how could I have been so ignorant? Well today I have been schooled...by a special needs teacher none-the-less. 

Just in case anyone thought any different because of my uneducated descriptions Deano is Number 1 to me!

From now on my descriptions will be correct and bummer I will have to re-read all of my blog posts and edit the whole bloody lot. (Oops probs just offended someone else with that inappropriate swear word) I will even have to go so far as to now issue a public apology to my ever so attractive husband...whom all these years must have developed s complex because he can't see his own reflection and I have been describing him as the "elephant man" to so many people! Oh and what about his siblings who are also Vision Impaired...I will have to apologise to them for being such a terrible relative and offending them for many many many years. What about everyone else in the Vision Impaired community...oh those poor souls...I am awful! 

So it's with true and utter remorse that I wish to ask for forgiveness to the Vision Impaired community as a whole...you are not unattractive to me... To me you don't look impaired in any way shape or form and I truly and utterly feel ashamed in my lack of command over the English language. I could blame it on my middle class white Australian Sydney  south side upbringing but I am sure in doing so I would offend all of my friends who were Greek, Italian, Croatian, Yugoslavian (we used to call them Wogs back in the day and they called themselves this too...I am sure another taboo today) because who says we were white....some of use pale skinned people have red, brown or even black hair.....we aren't supposed to see colour remember! So I guess I have no one to blame but myself... From now on I will consider myself corrected! My husband is Vision Impaired not Visually Impaired as most Australians would say (or is that just me!) and I consider him to be the most attractive man in the universe regardless of what I have been uneducatedly (if that is even a word!) calling him for so long.