[Blindtlk] Raising a Cane

[Szostak, Christine]

Hi All,
  Ok, this might be a very odd question, but I was just thinking about this and to me, it  seems really illogical.

  When I was getting O&M to help with transitioning to a cane, every time we stopped at a curb to cross a street, the instructor would have me hold the cane directly in front of me and hold it up in the air vertically about 2-3 or so inches off the ground. The explanation given to me for this was so that others would see that I am blind and am using a cane.

  The reasons that this seems a bit odd to me as a good practice are:

1)  I do not want a car to stop at a stop sign and wait for me to cross as I have always been taught not to trust in drivers that say, go ahead I will wait because they may not see other cars coming that could hit me if I follow their advice. Also, just because they stop, it does not mean that they see you so the signal you are assuming they are giving you, may not be the case.

2)  I do not necessarily want to bring attention to my blindness.

3)  I tend to look younger than I am and thus people, to my consternation, always try  to grab my arm... to help me. When I was in training for one of my prior guides, my instructor always joked that I was a really touchable person because total strangers would try to drag me across the street since they just assumed that I did not know  how to cross a street with a light:). This happens to me, regardless of whether it is with traffic or even in places like restaurants, total strangers will frequently grab my arm, put their arms around my shoulders... and tell me how amazing I am to be eating so well:). Since I really do not want this type of attention, I tend not to want  to use methods that are likely to induce it:). Since I could see holding a cane in the air as one good way to get this type of attention, I am not overly eager to keep up this practice.

  Thus, do others here hold up their canes while standing on curbs and if so, what has been your experience with respect to the above issues? I really, personally do not like this practice as it would seem to me that if you are a competent traveler who follows the  rules of the pedestrian and knows what you are doing, then you should not need to do this as it simply tells someone, this person is blind so stop and wait for them as they will not be a safe traveler or is trying to signal that they need your help. Perhaps I am completely misunderstanding the point of doing this but I just really feel like this is an out-of-date practice, one that tries to heavily point out blindness which would seem to lead to increasing the stigma rather than showing that we are competent individuals, and something  that could actually be dangerous rather than helpful to a cane traveler.


  I can understand this type of practice if you want for some reason to indicate that you are blind or have a VI (i.e., when  you are concerned that you may trip... and do not want individuals to just think that you are clumsy...) so please know that I am not trying to discount these types of situations rather it is just on the curb side if you are just trying to cross the street  and have any of the above three reasons for not wanting to do so that I am asking about and feeling this way about.
Happy weekend all!
Chris

Dr. Christine M. Szostak
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Department of Social Sciences
Shorter University
Rome, Georgia
szostak.1 at osu.edu<mailto:szostak.1 at osu.edu>
cszostak at shorter.edu