[nfbmi-talk] Great Blog Post from Deon Lyons

[Fred Wurtzel]

Hello,

 

I do not know this gentleman, personally.  His name is Deon Lyons.  He is
someone who lost his eyesight later in life.  I absolutely love his attitude
and response to change.  It is a good lesson for older people who go blind
and for everyone about change.  You can read his other blog posts at
www.dplyons.wordpress.com

 

 

He mentions anger.  I can identify with it.  he points out it is not good
enough to stop in the anger, it is necessary to act.  For my part I still
feel the anger, yet I try to use it creatively to move on and turn it into
love.  Not always easy.  I am working through a few issues and I hope to
finish them some day.  Anyway Deon has inspired me with his very positive
and creative way to move on after his anger.  He's a good role model.

 

Warmest Regards,

 

Fred

 

2013 01 16 Touch Type

January 16, 2013

//

5

"You should learn how to touch type." She said it again. The air hung
quietly heavy

with those words that seemed to scratch across the chalkboard. "Touch type?
Me? Are

you serious?" I awkwardly avoided it again. For the seventieth time, I
dodged my

wife's attempts to get me to learn how to type like a normal typer, instead
of the

hunt and peck system which I had come to know and get by with.

I was satisfied with having to look at the keypad all the time. I was
satisfied trying

to write an email with no capital letters, commas, apostrophes, or any of
the other

ways to type normally. It was all lower case, and it was all good, and I was
used

to it. It didn't matter if I couldn't keep up with the chat rooms persistent
scrolling,

or if most folks couldn't understand my abbreviations with words, it just
didn't

matter, that is, until I found out that if I was going to be able to use the
computer

at all, I would have to rely on the keypad alone, and the fact that if I was
going

to attend the Carroll center, learning to touch type was one of the
criteria. Everything

I knew about the computer went flying out the window, along with my vision.
It all

changed, and I had to change if I was ever going to use the computer again.
Everything

changed, and I had no choice but to change, right along with it.

All of my usual, comfortable traits abruptly came to a halt that summer
morning in

2010, and everything screeched to a mucked up, muddled mess of confusion and
uncomfortable

unfamiliarity.

Is that even a word?

Well, if it ain't, it should be.

The first experience I had with my new way of using computers came when my
wife and

I went to Augusta, and were introduced to Steve Sawczyn, who was an
assistive technology

instructor for the State of Maine. He instantly found his way into my world,
and

instantly fascinated my wife as well. You see, he is blind, like me, and he
represented

all things possible, which was page one in the first edition of the handbook
of my

brand new life. He represented all that was available out there, and he
represented

all of the hard work that was standing in the way of me, and page two. He
instantly

caught the attention of my wife as he quickly took out his laptop and
started flying

through the keypad. He went from a Mac operating system, to a windows
platform, on

the same laptop, in the blink of a keystroke. He did something else that I
couldn't

quite wrap my head around. He made his computer talk to him. He made his
computer

talk so fast, I thought I was going to explode with anxiety. He made it all
look,

and sound so easy though, as he sped his way through the menus and dialogue
boxes

and drop down lists and everything else that I had no idea about. He
impressed me,

and scared the hell out of me, and made me mad, and thankful, and grateful,
and humiliated

and frustrated and hopeful and sad and happy and the exhilarated speed of
anxiety

reached even higher levels the first time he came to our home with his ever
amazing

new world. It was a new world, but I quickly learned that it was a new world
that

was right there, at the tip of my fingers.

I dove head first into my mew, unfamiliar, emotional adventure into a
strange, new,

digitally dark world. I knew where the flashlight was, but I had to figure
out which

key command would take me to it. It was a nerve wracking experience that was
both

amazingly enlightening, and incredibly frightening. I knew what I wanted to
do with

the computer, I just couldn't see what was on the screen anymore, and it
made me

mad as hell. I was mad as hell, but I was also fully aware that with an
attitude

of anger, I would not be able to go anywhere, and I would end up being a
shivering

puddle of misguided me. This, as I finally convinced myself, was not a
viable option

at all.

I sit here today, and I am able to tell you that I did learn how to touch
type, and

with this new learned tool, my writing exploded out onto the monitor, one
page at

a time. All of the stuff swirling around in my head found its way onto the
screen,

and page after page, day after day, I have kept on writing. Most times, I
have no

idea where all of this key punching will take me, but it does, in fact, take
me.

It takes me here, and there, and way over there, and snaps me right back
here again.

It takes me inside my head, out through the fields, back in time, ahead into
the

future, here at home, into my childhood bedroom, through the halls of my
grade school,

across town, down to the coast, up into the mountains, and in through the
emotions

of my past. It does all of this, with the simple touch of a key. It does all
this,

through my fingertips.

I joke sometimes about writing things, and then when I go back and read
through the

piece, it's like I am reading it for the first time. I know my memory is
shot, and

my brain stem is waterlogged, and I just don't remember things sometimes,
but this

is different. This is sort of like an outer body experience. It's like I
have climbed

into the pc and pulled out something someone else wrote. I actually think
that I

am possessed sometimes. Probably due to either too much chocolate, or not
enough

chocolate. I think the latter is more than likely.

That's it. Now, I'm thinking about a bag of Hershey's mini's in the freezer.

Help!

And now I'm back.

Where was I?

Oh yes, I got it.

I recently, in the last couple days, finished a fiction novel that I started
writing

back in the fall of 2011. This venture has taken me places that I never
dreamed of.

It's a novel full of my memories of places, and people, and events, and just
things

in general. It's a novel full of me, and as I wrote it, I actually
rediscovered things

about my past that caused me to laugh, cry, and get filled up with some of
the same

emotions that raced through me as a young man. It showed me many of my
emotions that

poured out of me, onto the screen. It told me many different stories that I
had no

idea were inside of me. It told and showed me a side of me that I had always
felt

comfortable with, but usually tended to overlook. It raced out of me, around
the

room, and fell onto the screen. It was a marvelous adventure that I had been
waiting

fifty two years for. It was part of me, and I became part of it.

I'm not sure what I am going to do with this amazing thing that I've typed,
but one

thing is for sure, I will never forget the story, nor the experience of
writing it,

and if that's all I ever get done with it from here on out, then I am much
more the

better because of it, and have no regrets what so ever.

I never know where my typing will take me. I never know what's around the
next space

bar, or the next shift key, or the next comma, or quotation mark. I never
know what

is going to be at the bottom of the page, but I do know, that if I hadn't
learned

how to touch type, there wouldn't be anything at the bottom of the page.