People of Color
January 4: Day 4 of L.C. Schäfer's A-Story-a-Day for 2024
January 4: World Braille Day
DISCLAIMER: I was born without the wherewithal to write this.
Born three months premature, I required oxygen support for four months thereafter. My retinas detached, as they are prone to do when greedy and adventurous retinal blood vessels are gifted extra oxygen.
Don't be fooled by my eloquence, because this is fiction.
It is fiction because on my third day of life I suffered an intracranial hemorrhage that filled perfectly good gray matter with pockets of blood. These pockets clotted and then dissolved and were absorbed over time, the resulting holes in my head collapsing upon themselves. My head circumference lagged behind all the normal heads. I cannot even tell right from left, let alone write anything.
An historical aside:
In 1824 a blind Frenchman, Louis Braille, developed his eponymous system of reading, using little bumps. It was a version akin to the Morse Code, using tactile sensitivity instead of the auditory system Samuel Morse developed the following decade.
As interesting as all that is...
As I grew, my mind sought to rewire itself around the dead ends to get along in a universe where sight really helps, as does adequate mentation. I have neither. I struggle but survive.
The hex code for black is #000000. But if black is the absence of all color, then all others — to me — are people of color. I don't even "see" black. I am brain blind, which means color simply does not exist. I might as well be a 3-D being trapped in a 4-D world.
The real tragedy of blindness is that all visual assistive devices and services rely on a pretty good brain.
How can a red-tipped cane help me if I don't grasp the concept of mortality inherent in getting hit by a bus. A lighthouse for the blind is only good for people who know how to get on the boat. Braille is one such boat. Mine sank into the gloom of #000000 long ago, into black holes from which nothing can escape.
Yet I am loved. That part of my brain has no holes. That makes life worth living.
About the Creator
Gerard DiLeo
Retired, not tired. Hippocampus, behave!
Make me rich! https://www.amazon.com/Gerard-DiLeo/e/B00JE6LL2W/
My substrack at https://substack.com/@drdileo
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Comments (3)
Your story blew my mind and your comment opened my eyes!
Loved the story. Loved your comment. This was enlightening and really quite sad.
I wrote this to emphasize the point that many blind persons suffer other co-morbidities, e.g., cerebral palsy, impaired cognition, spasticity, and maladaptive behavioral dysfunction. Tragically, these people are left behind if they don't have the mental sharpness or the behavioral ability to learn Braille or to use other visual assistive technologies. As wonderful an idea as Braille was — and its life-changing benefits, the world of the blind isn't always as simply remedied by just developing a code for letters. For example, consider the immobile blind person. A motorized wheelchair is useless. The real world has real problems for many blind people who cannot otherwise adapt due to cognitive impairment.