Hi guys,

Without the intention of being perceived as egotistical, I like to think I am a reasonably intelligent person. I write well, sing well, and if I’ve invested enough time into learning about a topic, I can converse with others about it and develop sound theories to expand on it in a way which either meets, or exceeds social expectations. I got excellent grades during my last year of high school. I could have done the same in university if a mixture of depression and apathy did not get the best of me between second and third year. It stands to reason that if I wanted a master’s degree in something theoretical, I could have easily earned it. Cracking the system, and repeatedly using a formulaic algorithm to give professors a simultaneous ego boost and a new perspective was something that didn’t really appeal to me long term though; the novelty kind of wore off when I realized everyone else was just doing the same thing, and paying an exorbitant amount of money to do so. Nonetheless, despite my accomplishments, I feel innately lacking in worth and competence as an adult.

More specifically, I feel like there are a bunch of practical skills, in terms of independent living, handywork, repair, and otherwise “being a man”, that I completely lack. It’s not anyone’s fault- it’s that a lot of these skills are picked up by observation, and sighted people have this…in their eyes, benevolent, but from my perspective, obnoxious, instinct where if I’m moving too slowly for them or seem to be struggling, they just kind of bulldoze me out of the way and take over because their fear of embarrassing me outweighs their desire to coach me on how to improve, or more often, because they know they’re capable of getting the task done faster and better than I can, and teaching me seems like a worthless endeavor. This is a tendency which manifests itself in other forms too- such as the claim that “this is a one-man job” before promptly asking someone sighted for help when they think I’m not listening, or the “we’ll give you a simple task so there’s no way you can f\*\*k it up” (never said explicitly- but implied) maneuver, which strives to make me feel included, meanwhile I’m not learning or growing, while everyone else just tiptoes around me.

In a sense, I get it. Teaching someone with a physical disability to complete a task that is perceived as being too visual, or too risky, is frustrating for most sighted people. The lesson almost has to occur separately from the task itself, because I’m pretty sure the last thing you want to do is have someone who can’t see what they’re doing try to drill holes in a straight line across a piece of plywood which needs to be securely attached to your house. Whereas sighted people can see something happen once and replicate it quickly, for blind people, the lesson must be executed on a separate piece of “rough copy” wood (for instance), where the movement, tactile cues, and compensatory strategies are established and practiced, followed by the application on the actual wood being drilled for the house…but in the words of SweetBrown…”ain’t nobody got time for that”, so these skills tend to be entirely skipped over, and any questions of "why can't you teach me this?" are swept under the rug with politically correct, appeasing platitudes.

One time, I was working at a camp with this girl who, for the sake of this article, I’ll call April. Long story short, we both volunteered to assist on a recreational camping trip weekend, and I was feeling quite amused and excited about learning how to put up a tent. I looked at the manual for this tent, along with its bizarre, squiggle-lines-everywhere diagram, and started trying to figure out how everything snapped together. When I was just about finished assembling the frame, April came over to me, exclaiming: “what are you doing? It’s all wrong!”. Curious, as it looked like the diagram, I replied “can you show me how it works?”, and she was like “you’re doing great. Just get out of the way” as if I was a child. She then proceeding to tear down everything I’d done and put the entire thing together in about 5 minutes, never offering me any mentorship or guidance as to how I could do it independently, along the way. I felt like an idiot for the rest of the weekend, but at that stage in my life, I had no way of explaining the obstacle I was facing, and felt guilty advocating for myself, because I felt like I was demanding unnecessary attention for the preservation of my own, fragile ego. I still feel this way to a degree. As such, I tend to get defensive and childishly avoidant when placed in such situations, because I can usually sense, within about 5 minutes of beginning the activity, that I’m more an uncomfortable ornament than a practical assistant.

Whining aside, I’m wondering- how do other blind people get around this? How do sighted people feel about what I’ve addressed here? Am I putting words in your mouth by saying it’s an efficiency thing? Is it a “not wanting to embarrass you” thing? I feel like the best relationships I have in my life are those in which I never have to worry about this: where the person I’m spending time with can learn as much from me as I can from them without anything being “watered down for accessibility”. Is such a dynamic even viable, or is this just something I’m going to have to swallow? Fellow blind/visually impaired people- how do you get around the "sighted write off"?