[NFBOH-Cleveland] I WANT THAT! by Peggy Pinder

[Suzanne Turner]

I WANT THAT

 

by Peggy Pinder

 

Many things can happen when a teenager suddenly loses her sight. What does
happen depends on a variety of unpredictable factors family influence,
teachers,

chance. Perhaps for each person there is a crucial incident which changes
everything that comes after. Peggy Pinder believes this to be true for her.

 

As you read her story keep in mind that the teenager you're reading about
went on to finish high school, earn a bachelor's degree with double majors
in

history and philosophy at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa (where she
reported for and then was chief editor of the college newspaper); earn a law
degree

from Yale, serve five years as a state criminal prosecutor, and establish a
private law practice in which she now works. Here in her own words is what

happened.

 

I lost my sight as a teenager. Because of my eye condition my eventual total
blindness was predictable. Even so, nobody had ever told me or my parents

that this could happen. I was devastated.

 

I had been to the store earlier in the day. While waiting at the check-out
counter I had picked up a magazine as one does to pass the time. I read
little

bits of it, and it looked interesting so I bought it.

 

Later that day at home I picked up the magazine. And, that was how I found
out I was blind. I couldn't read it at all.

 

I remember wondering if I should tell my mother who was in the kitchen
because I could guess what trouble would start. I remember thinking about it
and

deciding to tell her because, sooner or later, people would notice that I
was not reading anything. That would include schoolwork which would be
troublesome,

too. So, I sighed and told my mother. I was sure right about the trouble.

 

I was totally unprepared for such a change. I didn't know it was coming. I
had no techniques like Braille or a white cane with which to continue my
life.

I didn't want such techniques anyway because that would mean that I would
always be blind and, as I thought then, unable to do anything with my life.

 

Adding this horrifying and unexpected change to the other changes of
adolescence was just too much for me. I withdrew into myself. Nobody
understood how

bad it really was. There was no one to whom I could talk, nobody who
understood. They all said things would work out, but they could all see.
What did

they know?

 

During this time, I happened to hear some blind people on the radio one
night. They were in town for a convention, they said. They explained to the
radio

audience that blindness was not the horrible tragedy that everyone thinks it
is. They were blind themselves, and they all held jobs, had families, went

where they wanted.

 

They said blindness was not a tragedy that it all centered around how you
handled it, just like hundreds of other differences among people that we all

deal with every day like being too short to reach a cupboard or too light to
carry heavy loads. That's why we have stepstools and carts.

 

According to them blindness was no different. You just had to figure out
ways to do things others do with sight. The ways exist. Blindness could be
reduced

to the level of a nuisance.

 

I turned off the radio. It made me mad to hear people talking such nonsense.
I knew how bad it was to be blind. I could tell them a thing or two. And,

how dare they say that I could lead a full life as a blind person?

 

I hated people who tried to sugar-coat things and act like nothing was wrong
when obviously everything was. They were blind. Why didn't they just shut

up and accept their limitations gracefully as I was doing?

 

My way of accepting my limitations was to become a bookworm. Books are put
into Braille or recorded onto tapes and distributed to blind people through

a nationwide library system. I read everything. I had always been a reader.
My whole family is. That was one of the most devastating things about
blindness.

I couldn't just pick up what others were reading and read it.

 

Even so, there were things I could read, and I read all the time. I turned
down invitations and declined to do things because I had some reading to do.

It is not good for a teenager to spend the years just before adulthood in
her room reading during the time when everyone else is learning to take more

and more responsibility and to interact personally with the world around
her.

 

But that's what I did. I didn't know what else to do. I found contact with
other people uncomfortable. They were uncomfortable because they "didn't
know

how to act around a blind person," as they put it. Why couldn't I just be a
person anymore? I was now some strange being who upset people. That upset
me.

It upset me all the more because I agreed with them. I didn't know how to
act around me either. So I read books and lived in the lives of other
people.

 

My system worked through most of high school. But it wouldn't work after
that. My parents weren't willing to let me continue to hide out from the
world.

They knew that there were blind people who worked, who took responsibility,
who made lives for themselves. They were determined to have that chance for

me. They began searching.

 

I well remember the exact moment and the exact location when I discovered
that my parents were right. I was standing in a hallway, waiting my turn to
speak

to the occupant of the office beside which I was standing, doing nothing in
particular.

 

I heard someone down the hall and around the corner come out of an office. I
heard him lock his door with a key and check to be sure the door was locked.

I then heard him walk briskly down the hall, turn the corner into the hall
where I stood, walk by me, and go out of the door at the other end of the
hall.

 

I knew he was blind because I heard his white cane. I was stunned! Simple
tasks? Yes. But I couldn't get over that here was a blind person making his
own

schedule, caring for his and his employer's property responsibly,
determining where he would go, deciding how to get there, and then doing it.
I couldn't

do any of those things for myself. Not really.

 

Or, could I? He had. If he had, then maybe I could, too. He was blind. That
hadn't stopped him. Maybe, just maybe. I remember straightening up from my

relaxed posture against the wall and saying the words very clearly in my
mind: "I want that."

 

You couldn't tell me in mere words about blind people doing things. You
couldn't talk at me over the radio. You couldn't give me stories to read
about

the blind. It didn't work. I didn't believe it. But it turned out that all
you really had to do was to put one blind person in front of me, managing
tasks

I thought were impossible with ease and style, and I could get the point. I
could do it, too.

 

I found that blind person who had walked by me in the hall and found out how
he had found the self-confidence I thought was impossible for me. He is
still

a friend of mine and a colleague in the organization to which he introduced
me, the National Federation of the Blind. Incidentally, I learned later that

he was one of the very people I had heard on the radio program that had made
me so angry years before.

 

Through the National Federation of the Blind I met blind people from all
walks of life young and old, wealthy and poor, well-educated and with little
schooling,

technically skilled and unskilled. I met a whole cross section of American
society with the one common thread that they are blind.

 

Meeting all these people reinforced the original intuition I had had when I
observed my friend walk down the hall. Regardless of their backgrounds, all

these blind people were managing their own lives. If they could do it so
could I.

 

Going to meetings and national conventions of the National Federation of the
Blind showed me in a different way the same thing that the guy walking down

the hall had first demonstrated: that blind people have only one thing in
common, blindness. But they must consciously take that blindness and examine

it, understand what it is, understand how it functions in the world around
them.

 

Until blindness is understood, you can just end up in your room, reading,
avoiding the whole thing. Once blindness is understood, then the whole rest
of

your life opens up.

 

I became a member of the National Federation of the Blind after learning
these things. Two things drew me into the organization. One was that I need
the

continuing support and encouragement of other blind people who keep
reminding me that the only limitations on me are the ones I impose upon
myself.

 

The second and equally important reason was that I was so very lucky. I had
parents who believed in my future and set about helping me to find it. We
found

self-confident, capable blind people in the National Federation of the
Blind, organized and ready to help others.

 

I want to be sure that all other blind people have that same chance.
Blindness was devastating to me because I didn't understand it and thought
it had

ended my useful life at thirteen.

 

Some day, through the work of the National Federation of the Blind, I hope
that all my fellow countrymen will have the basic understanding that my
parents

had gained from their brief contacts with self-confident blind people.
Because it was that understanding that blind people could have productive
lives

that kept my parents searching for help when I was a teenager.

 

The National Federation of the Blind was there for me when I needed it.
That's why I'll continue to work in it: for my own growth and protection and
to

insure that the same will be there for every other blind person.

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