People often tell me that they just don’t believe me when I
tell them that Deano is blind. “But He copes so well…or how can He do so much?”
Are both common comments that if I had a dollar for every time I have heard
them I would be very rich indeed!
But just as I shared a very embarrassing moment in my last
post Dean has had some doozies that have been caused by him faking being able
to see. One in particular sticks out in my mind. We were on a family holiday
with our new camper trailer hooked up to the tow bar. We had taken the coast
road from Lismore to the Gold Coast on what seemed like a never ending stretch
of coastal road with no views for miles other than bush scrub out the right
window and sclerophyll sand dunes through the left and a ribbon of hot steamy
road ahead.
With the fuel meter tipping down low I pulled into a lone service
station with the remainder of what seemed like every holidaying family in the
world all queuing to fill their thirsty tanks. The day was hotter than an
outback lizard under carriage and I wasn’t the best truckie at the time with
only a few hours of experience towing a trailer behind the car. I managed to
get the car and trailer into the line-up for the outside petrol pump…you know
it…the one closet to the road, so that I didn’t have to do any tricky turns or
even more embarrassing, unhook the trailer and do the walk of shame in order
not to hit anything in my towing path. In our little car with the air-conditioning
on full ball I hear a little voice from the back seat…”I need to do a wee wee
Mummy” This was a darling number 3 daughter who was 18 months old and had just
graduated into big girls pants.
Alarm bells rang in my head…what is a woman to do…I am not a
miracle queen…I can’t get out of the petrol pump line…and I can’t let my little
toddler down…she relied on me as did all the other occupants of the car and
those in the line behind me.
I turned and faced my husband who was blissfully unaware of
my dilemma listening to the radio as we crept along in the line. Until now
having three daughters toilet duty was a mummy thing, especially when we were
out and about, you hardly ever see a man taking their daughter to the male
toilet do you? What else could I do? I looked at him and said in a stern and a
little stressed voice…”Well it’s your turn I just can’t do it all. Can you
please take child number three to the toilet in the petrol station. Child
number one (who was 5 at the time) can lead you to the door of the bathroom and
you will have to find your way to a toilet from there.” Without a choice my
blind husband unlocked the girls out of their car seats and walked with child
number three over his shoulder and child number 1 holding his hand and guiding
him to the bathroom.
Meanwhile it was my time to fill up the car at the petrol
bowser. I got out of the car and started the flow into the tank. Clunk. The
tank indicated it was full so I took child number 2 out of the car and paid for
the petrol and came back to my car to find that the toilet mission had a successful
outcome for child number 3….but not so much for my poor husband who had put the
girls back in their car seats and was now almost lying on the floor in the
front seat of the car, his body slouched down with head leaning almost on my
lap and his hand over his face. “Can we just get out of here?” He demanded in
an impatient manner. I looked at him bewildered. I wondered what had happened,
had he robbed the store, had one of the kids played in toilet water…my mind
boggled.
“Can we just GO PLEASE!!!?” With that I put my pedal to the
metal and we hit the road…but as I drove I was compelled to inquire what had
gotten his goat? He started to compose himself and as he did he turned his head
in my direction and firmly said to me “Don’t you ever ask me to take the girls
to the toilet ever again, I have never been so embarrassed in all my life.”
What could possibly go so wrong, I was so perplexed at his
state…”What went down Babe?”
His response is one I will never forget “When child number
one led me to the male bathroom I felt around for the door the cubical. With my
hand out-stretched to try and feel the hard door but instead of a cold hard
feeling my fingertips brushed up against a warm soft bum! You see there were no
cubical doors and I just touched a man up on his BOTTOM while he was standing
in front of the toilet trying to pee”
“What happened next Hun?” was my immediate response, as I
tried to hold back the roar of laughter that was welling up inside me, just so
he could manage to get the rest of the story out before I completely
fell apart in fits of giggles.
“All I heard was the man pulling up his pants, and zipping up his
fly, he turned around and said “Mate you put me off!” Not sure what He was
thinking cause he did not know I was blind, as I didn’t have a cane, and I was
holding a little girl over my shoulder. I think that was the only reason he did
not job me one!”
From that moment I laughed all the way to the Gold Coast, I
giggled on and off through the evening and I think I laughed even in my sleep.
No I wasn’t laughing at Deano…just the absurdity of the whole situation. It has
been one of those stories that we tell dinner guests who ask Dean how much he
can see…Its one of the stories that we both laugh about today.
We managed to enjoy the rest of our camping trip and yes I
did all of the toileting trips from then on in even with our daughter number
four.
We did however sell that camper trailer after that holiday as we knew that we
never wanted to have to be stuck at that petrol station ever again!
