[stylist] creative non-fiction prompt

Fri Jan 25 15:16:00 UTC 2013

Uh, I don't think I can accomplish this month's writing prompt because of 
two things.  One, I don't think I understand it; and two, I haven't the 
sense of humor you have.  (Or the flair as her example has.)  Don't get 
discouraged that response was so low.  You've planted a seed in our brains 
and the next time the challenge is something like this, you may get more 
responses or later some just may show up as something newly written.
Barbara

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. -- Carl Sandburg
-----Original Message----- 
From: Chris Kuell
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 1:47 PM
To: Stylist
Subject: [stylist] creative non-fiction prompt

Greetings. A couple of weeks ago, Eve asked me to post another writing 
prompt. I decided to utilize the excellent lesson Bridgit posted about 
creative non-fiction, and asked that folks write a creative non-fiction 
piece related to blindness. I even offered a cash reward for anyone who got 
their piece published. The response has been... underwhelming. Nonetheless, 
I did the prompt, and here it is.

My Kingdom for a Button

By Chris Kuell

Last Christmas my wife and I decided to shuffle into the twenty-first 
century. We've never been cutting-edge people, and have always been slow to 
adopt new technology. We got our first CD player in 1997, about 15 years 
after everybody else jumped on the band wagon. We moved to DVDs during the 
final years of the Bush presidency, and still have some treasured VHS tapes 
stored in a closet.  Now it was time to take the technology plunge yet again 
and get one of those newer, big flat screen televisions. We went to Best 
Buy, got an excellent education from one of their knowledgeable salespeople, 
and then went to Costco to buy a 45 incher for half the price Best Buy was 
selling it for.

After unhooking the old TV, cable box, stereo and speakers, my son and I 
hauled the 200 pound entertainment center out to the curb. Next, I 
manhandled the old, 150 pound television outside, taping a 'STILL WORKS' 
sign to it. In the meantime, my daughter, who apparently can read Chinese 
and has incredible engineering skills, built the new entertainment center 
I'd bought online the week before. The new television, which couldn't have 
weighed twenty-five pounds, was placed center stage, and after some rewiring 
and finagling and cursing, we too could watch Ellen life size and in living 
color. Not me, of course. I'd be happy with a two inch screen, as long as it 
had a good sound system. But the big TV made my family happy, and my wife 
was downright giddy to watch Iron Chef on the big screen. And as a famous 
philosopher once said, "A happy wife means a happy life."

The trouble came last Saturday, as I settled into my recliner with a cold 
beer and a jar of peanuts to watch the Patriots play the Texans. Although 
there are at least seven different remotes controlling our house, I know 
which one runs the cable box and which one works the television. Between the 
two essential remotes, I counted 472 buttons. My wife had showed me which 
was the power button, the channel up, channel down, volume up and volume 
down. As for the rest, I have absolutely no clue what any of them do. I took 
a sip of beer and turned on the cable box. Next, I turned on the TV. I knew 
it was on, because I could hear static getting louder and softer when I 
played with the volume buttons, but I didn't appear to be on any show, and 
nothing happened when I pushed the channel up and down buttons. Hmmm. I 
turned everything off and started the process again, with no luck. Albert 
Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing 
over and over again and expecting a different result. So I repeated the 
process a dozen or more times, all the while my blood pressure was rising. 
Next, I ventured into the twilight zone, hammering at random various 
combinations of the400 plus unknown buttons. Maybe a missile launched in 
Poland, maybe my neighbor's microwave time changed, I can't say. But the 
football game, or anything else for that matter, certainly wasn't playing on 
my new television, that was for damn sure.

In the years since I went blind, I've developed a love-hate relationship 
with buttons. Either there's too many, or there aren't any. At our state NFB 
convention last year, the hotel elevator must have had over 30 buttons, all 
in some random order. In the upper left corner, the Braille read 10. Below 
that, 7, 4, 2, then a star, then a B, then a double dash. What the hell is a 
double dash floor? And where was 6? Inevitably, before I found 6 another 
passenger would come onto the elevator, see the blind guy on his knees 
communing before the bank of buttons and ask slowly, as if talking to a 
mentally challenged deaf child, "Can I help you?"

On the other end of the spectrum is the dreaded touch-screen. Where there 
used to be nice, logical buttons, now there is a flat, smooth plane of 
nothingness. It started with microwaves, where some ace employee at the 
factory probably figured touch-screens looked "cooler" than all those pesky 
bumps. Then, after running it by the engineers, they managed to produce them 
cheaper as well. In time, all the blind friendly, easy to use microwaves 
went the way of the dinosaurs. But, we blind people are a crafty bunch. 
Someone (I can't find who) invented a product called the loc-dot, which is a 
small sticker with a raised bump on it. These can be placed on a microwave 
touch-screen where all the numbers are and, viola! Now it's blind friendly.

Yet, the plague of touch screens has continued to spread. First to 
dishwashers, then to stoves, washing machines, dryers and even some 
refrigerators. And loc-dots don't always help here, because there are 
digital read-outs which can't be made tactile. To work my parent's stove, 
you push a touch screen until a digital read-out lets a sighted person know 
what temperature it's set to. Me-I have no friggin' clue. My brother's new 
stainless steel refrigerator has a touch screen panel on the front, which 
allows him to program the temp of the freezer, the vegetable bin, the beer 
shelf. Very cool stuff, which I can't use.

In January 2001, Apple launched a new product which is still changing the 
world-the first iPod. Smaller than a deck of cards, the iPod allowed users 
to compress and store their music digitally, so without CDs or drives or any 
external hardware beyond painful ear buds, the user could store and listen 
to tens of thousands of their favorite songs. It had one button-the on/off 
switch. Everything else was controlled via a new, tiny, patented touch 
screen in the shape of a circle. While the world fell in love with their 
newer and smaller iPods, the blind were left listening to outdated Walkmans 
or those select portable CD players that still had buttons for operation.

In time, the folks at Apple hopped onto the accessibility bandwagon. Fourth 
generation iPods, as well as iPhones, came with speech output and a new 
technology called voice over, which does allow a blind person to use them. I 
have several friends who, after a month or two of aggrevation and 
frustration, now love their iPhones.

As for me, I think I'll drag my feet for a while longer. I do listen to my 
music on an iPod shuffle-the only apple product with raised buttons and no 
screen. I still utilize an old cell phone I got in 2003. It has a numeric 
keypad, an on/off button, a send button, and that's it. It's simple, it's 
tactile, and I love it.

As for the football game, I ended up listening the old fashioned way, tuning 
it in on the radio. When my son came home, he helped me figure out that 
while the power button on one remote turned the cable box on, when I turned 
the television on with the other remote, it turned the cable box off. 
There's an old Irish expression that's perfectly appropriate here, but my 
editors wouldn't appreciate me dropping the F bomb.

Now that mystery is solved, I can independently watch television again. But 
what will happen when remotes someday become buttonless, or people control 
their technology completely via their touch screen phones? Our kitchen 
stove, an iron behemoth still controlled with knobs, has to be 70 years old. 
Rust has chewed it's way through one corner, and I can only deflect my 
wife's demands for a new one for so long. Same goes for our push-button 
dishwasher. Last week it made a horrible sparking sound, then smelled like 
burnt rubber bands while it chugged and churned. When old Bessie finally 
kicks the bucket, will I have to resort to washing dishes by hand?

I have little doubt that my pleas for a simple, button adorned world are 
useless. Progress, as somebody famous once said, marches on. I am comforted, 
at least a little, to know there's one button that will never leave me. The 
first button we all experienced as babies. My treasured belly button.

_______________________________________________
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http://www.writers-division.net/
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