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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I WANT THAT<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>by Peggy Pinder<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Many things can happen when a teenager suddenly loses her sight. What does happen depends on a variety of unpredictable factors family influence, teachers,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>happened.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>that this could happen. I was devastated.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>bits of it, and it looked interesting so I bought it.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>too. So, I sighed and told my mother. I was sure right about the trouble.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>they know?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>where they wanted.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>to the level of a nuisance.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>how dare they say that I could lead a full life as a blind person?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>up and accept their limitations gracefully as I was doing?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I couldn't just pick up what others were reading and read it.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>and more responsibility and to interact personally with the world around her.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>me. They began searching.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>to the occupant of the office beside which I was standing, doing nothing in particular.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>do any of those things for myself. Not really.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>relaxed posture against the wall and saying the words very clearly in my mind: "I want that."<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I thought were impossible with ease and style, and I could get the point. I could do it, too.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>he was one of the very people I had heard on the radio program that had made me so angry years before.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>technically skilled and unskilled. I met a whole cross section of American society with the one common thread that they are blind.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>these blind people were managing their own lives. If they could do it so could I.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>the hall had first demonstrated: that blind people have only one thing in common, blindness. But they must consciously take that blindness and examine<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>it, understand what it is, understand how it functions in the world around them.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>your life opens up.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>self-confident, capable blind people in the National Federation of the Blind, organized and ready to help others.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>ended my useful life at thirteen.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>had gained from their brief contacts with self-confident blind people. Because it was that understanding that blind people could have productive lives<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>that kept my parents searching for help when I was a teenager.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>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<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>insure that the same will be there for every other blind person.<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>