A Blind Dinner

I sit down at the table in the restaurant; it's one of those places that's not really a restaurant, but not really a cafe either. It's stuck sort of in a netherworld of food outlets. My sister sits across me and my mother sits next to me. we sit in the restaurnant at 4.00pm having decided to have an early dinner. I look around and see the only other person in the restaurant. A squatty balding man, wearing an orange checkered shirt and jeans. He sits alone at his table, both hands are clasped around a plate of food in front of him and his face is tilted down. He is blind, and gives himself away by feeling around for his food. He is sitting alone at a table for five.

I'm immediately drawn to this man, and I can't help but to look over every now and again, I can't help it but I begin to feel sorry for him. He seems rather nonchalant in his mannerisms, but something about him is uneasy. I begin to feel heartbroken, and as usual I begin to feel compelled to help this person. Suddenly I notice he starts tapping his fingers lightly on the side of the table to the beat of the song playing on the overhead speakers.

A waiter arrives at his table and places a plate of food in front of him, whilst guiding the blind man's hand to the plate. He speaks to him quietly, explaining what he just put down in front of him. Apart from the fact that I'm being extremely rude, I continue to stare. I can't help myself as I peer over every now and again, and there he sits eating, wordlessly...sightlessly. He seems happy, and for a moment I feel envious of this man's weary acceptance of his circumstances.

I shouldn't be feeling sorry for him at all. I concentrate harder and continue staring...rudely, but the more I look at him the more I can almost read him like an open book. Is this what blindness does to us?...make us easier to read? They say we hold a lot of emotion in our eyes, and that our eyes are the window to our hearts or souls or some wisecrack thing like that, but I guess since this man had no sight, he had to put his emotions elsewhere...in his hands. I could tell that when he was nervous he would rub his fingers together and play with his nails. I could tell that when he was offended he would ball his hands into fists, and when he was sad he would gently intertwine them together. I mean this guy really held his emotions on his sleeve, or more literally in his hands.

I was reminded back to when I had my own eye surgery, and for two days being unable to open my eyes. It was pure trauma to say the least. I always said after that, that we take for granted how much we rely on our eyesight even for simple things that you would think would otherwise be unaffected, like eating. For two days I couldn't eat, I felt odd putting food in my mouth not knowing which way was up or down, and I know my family would never play a trick on me and give me some gross food, but still I had to actually physically SEE the food before I would eat it. It was a real eye opening experience for me, excuse the pun, but it taught me the importance of our eyes because I was in pain for those two days. Not from the physical pain of surgery, but psychologically, I couldn't bear not seeing.

I caught a glimpse of my sister peering over in the same direction I was looking. Then she looked back at me.
'I feel...' she began but caught herself, searching for the right word '...sad'. She had stopped eating, I questioned her quizzing expression and asked her why, 'I dont know, I cant explain it, I just feel unhappy. I shot her an odd furtive look and she slightly inclined her head and flicked it in the direction of the blind man. My mother, who had up to now been oblivious to this interaction looked over towards us and asked what was wrong. I quickly reiterated the story of the blind man. My sister looked angrily back at me.
'He's blind, not deaf' she said quietly through gritted teeth. I didn't understand immediately. I had said blind, hadn't I? did I get something wrong?
'I know, that's what I said, blind'
'No you idiot I mean he's not deaf, so shut a little will you'
'Oh' comprehension dawned and I hadn't realised that my voice was reverberating in the empty restaurant and I laughed, then stopped abruptly.

We begin eating our meals once they arrived and I continued to look over at the blind man, and even though I know he is blind I turn away momentarily when he turns his head in our direction.
The waiter brings him a drink, slipping it into the blind man's hands and simultaneously reaching for the lid to get it open. The blind man pulls his hand back with the drink bottle.
'it's ok, i've got it' he says. The waiter walks away, a little embarassed.

Later the blind man asks for help to get to the sink to wash his hands. The basin is situated in the back corner of the restaurant. The waiter helps him immediately, ushering him right, then left, dodging all the tables. The waiter holds out the blind man's hands and traces the basin showing him the tap, the soap dispenser, the paper towel rack and then the bin. The man says thank you and the waiter takes it as a cue to leave. The blind man washes his hands, feeling his way around the sink. When he finishes he turns around and, without his walking stick, begins to feel his way back to the counter to pay. I crane my neck looking for the waiter trying to mutely express that the blind man needed help, but eventually he made it on his own.

The blind man pays and is ushered back to his table by the waiter to get his walking stick. The waiter walks the blind man out, who is now asking for directions to the nearest chemist.
'Across the road, then left, it's just around the corner' the waiter spoke rather loudly as if the blind man couldn't hear him. I noticed that the waiter was hesitant with his directions, not really understanding what it would all mean to a blind man, who would be feeling his way around. How do you explain through the sense of Touch rather than through sight.
'Ok so across the road and around the corner on the left' the blind man repeated, sensing the hesitation in the waiters voice and simultaneously reassuring him that he knew what he was doing.
Then the blind man walked out. Through the glass window I could see him flick open his walking stick which was folded on itself, and begin walking.

Twenty minutes later once we had left and were driving back through the wide roads lined with specialty shops, I looked out my window and saw the blind man walking down the pathway. He had his walking stick in his right hand and he stood right along the edge of the curb, feeling the step where the sidewalk and road meet with his stick. He stayed on the sidewalk, walking along, as we drove by. I figured he had more of a sense of walking straight when he was on the edge feeling something that was essentially tangible, rather than the slick open meaningless sidewalk, where you could end up walking diagonally and wouldn't realise it.

I wondered to myself, if he lived nearby, how he was getting home. I imagined him taking public transport home, i'm sure it's not impossible, but it was hard for me, a non-blind person to imagine. I thought about that blind man all the way home and again that night, I wondered if he was asleep in his bed by now, or still wandering through the streets looking for the chemist. And even though I shouldn't, even though I know i'm stereotyping in saying he probably needs help, even though i'm the type of person that doesn't believe anyone is inferior because of a disability, or as I like to call it 'differently abled', I couldn't help but feel sorry for him.
I couldn't put aside my instinct to want to help and feel sorry for him. I wasn't able to let reign all that I had learnt and all my beliefs about the not subjectifying the differently abled. I wasn't able to say that he was more than capable of living his life to his full potential, even though I knew he could. Yet I also couldn't help but feel sorry for myself, for thinking I was the superior one. He would be walking away with four amazingly hightened and intutitive senses, whereas I sat at home with five ordinary senses feeling empathy for the weak blind man.