Text Me Not

When text messaging first burst onto the scene, I thought, "Well, I'll never do that." I did briefly picture a strange parallel universe where mobile phone users, sick of tapping tiny keys, spoke into their phones that converted their voices into text messages, and then would send the text message to another phone which would, in turn, read the message aloud in a Robby-the-Robot voice. Luckily for society at large, we have not yet reached that level of laziness.

Still, texting has become one of the most common forms of communication, and those of us who live between the world of the visually perfect and the completely blind (who have Braille devices for texts) face a dilemma. On the one hand, we want to participate in the world as somewhat normal people, and normal people send out the occasional text. On the other hand, if we send out a text message (which is relatively easy), people might get the wrong idea and text us back. We're left with a tiny message on an electronic screen, and if we don't happen to have a CCTV or a friend who can read it, we're momentarily illiterate. Plus, these things are supposed to be private, right? What to do?

Well, for starters, there's technology. The problem is that technology for people like us moves very slowly. Many of my friends have made the perfectly logical assumption that my phone can read texts aloud, just like my PC at home reads documents and web pages. It does not. I'm not entirely sure such a product exists. If it does, please post something about it - I'd be suriosu to look into it. All I could fins on the web were people asking of such a product exists... a lot of them... which seems to indicate that there's a market.

The biggest surprise to me is that, of all companies, Apple seems to be ahead on this one. They've added their VoiceOver program to the iPhone, an they have a pretty good zoom too. I don't happen to own one, and it's hard to test it out in stores, but at least they're trying.

iPhone Vision Accessibility

For the moment, though, I am mostly texting-incapable. It's not high on my priority list, but it does seem like a pretty easy gap to fill. So what's the deal, phone makers? Low vision product manufacturers? Get on the ball. When you figure things out, send me a text.

Or not.

Waiting

Waiting is hard.

Waiting tables, for someone like me, is nearly impossible. I've done at in the friendly confines of a summer camp, as a counselor, for our biannual "fancy" dinner where we wait tables in character. Loads of fun. Definitely not the same as being an actual waiter.

Waiting for acceptances or, more often, rejections, is the toughest part of being a writer. You sit there, at the mercy of theater companies and fellowship committees, having put your heart and soul on paper and having no other power to convince them that you're worthy. The only part that makes the wait for college acceptances worse is that, in that case, you actually expect someone to say yes. Woe to he who expects.

And then, there's expecting... waiting for the expected. There are all kinds of divinations that go on on the birthing industry, all kinds of special warning signs that tell you when the baby is nine months, eight weeks, two days, or six hours away. They are all, to put it politely, bull-crap. No one knows. Two days could mean three weeks; six hours could mean twenty minutes. And when predictions are off by that kind of scale, they aren't predictions at all, but wild guesses.

We're left with the pure experience of waiting. Sitting, standing, doing dishes... taking walks for the sake of walks... looking for any and all events within shirt walking distance. Watching lots of TV. It's not at all easy. There's a part of me that would love to get work done, but the mind won't consent to that. It wants to wait, too. So that's what we'll do.

Waiting is hard. Luckily, eventually, it ends. What lies beyond waiting can be truly transformative, joyous, life-changing... and, sure, sometimes it's disappointing too. But at the very least, the end of waiting produces one wonderful feeling: relief.

How Far We've Come

I suspect I'm among the only people who has seen See No Evil, Hear No Evil. A shame.

Back in the glorious 1980's, Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor teamed up to make one buddy comedy after another. Most of them, including this one, were terribly written. The studios saw no need to put a lot of resources into writing and direction: they knew from Silver Streak that they had a winning combination of chemistry, timing, and racial harmony between the two comic geniuses. So, it seems as though they threw them into any wacky situation they could find, and slapped a title on it.

In this case, Wilder and Pryor took the emphasis off race and put it on disability: namely, deafness and blindness. You can imagine all the wacky antics that go with this. The plot of the movie fails to pull the antics together, nor to fill a single gaping hole in the story (of which there are many). But it does give us a young Kevin Spacey with a bad British accent, and the required beautiful female villain.

The two characters spend a lot of time shouting, "I'm deaf!" and "I'm blind!" Sometimes they interject a curse or two. And, while Pryor blind man is startlingly incompetent at mobility of any kind, Wilder's deaf man can read lips better than I can hear them. These are flaws, to be sure, but at the heart of each character there is... well, a heart. Each man has a passion, a sense of shame (or lack thereof), and a weakness. They are, in fact, fully developed characters, who happen to be missing one of the five senses.

In fact, while the story is about as thin as Kate Moss during Lent, the characters are three-dimensional. How nice. I'm not going to make one of those "better in the old days" arguments, mainly because there were plenty of one-dimensional characters in early film, but the 80's did present us with a lot of earnest, open characters. The current trend goes against that: irony does not lend itself to genuine feeling.

I still wouldn't give this movie more than a few stars, but it does hold a special place in my heart. It's one of those movies I saw over and over again when I was a kid, all within the first few years that my condition had popped up and was getting worse. I knew how unrealistic it was, even then, but it didn't matter. Watching it now -- I just saw it for the first time in more than ten years -- it still makes me laugh.

So I guess what I really need is a not-not-deaf buddy who can help me solve crimes.

Any Day Now

It could happen tomorrow, this weekend, or three weeks from now. We have a cradle, a changing table, and a glider chair (like a rocking chair, but awesomer) ready to go. So I'm sure that when the baby does come along, we'll be completely prepared and won't be surprised by anything.

It's standard practice to pack a bag ahead of time, with everything we'll need at the hospital. There's even a classic I Love Lucy episode about it. It's probably not so common to include several lists in big, huge print so that, when it comes time to call family, friends, and a car service, I'll actually be able to read the numbers.

It's also not so standard to warn your doula that she might have to read small print for us. A doula, for the uninitiaed, is a kind of birthing coach who gives you some useful tips, shows up at your house when labor is underway, and helps the pregnant woman (and her hapless partner) get through labor and delivery. Like midwives, they are a severely under-appreciated and valuable resource, especially if you're trying to get through this process without medication and intervention. We happened to find one we really like.

Doulas don't have any one set of responsibilities -- it depends on the woman, the couple, the hospital/birthing center/home, and the doula herself -- but it's rare that they have to do a lot of on-the-spot reading. However, in our case, one of us will be going through contractions every few minutes, and the other will be legally blind. So it seems fair to warn her that she'll have that added responsibility. I don't think she'll mind.

It's an exciting time, no question. I'm curious about how much of the actual birth I'll be able to see, and what the whole thing will look like. I promise not to put up any birth pictures -- believe me, unless you're someone who enjoys seeking them out, you don't want to see them -- but I'll try to keep a few mental images handy.

The Blind Succeeding the Blind

Our current, beleaguered governor is well known for being not-not-blind. But did you know that, were he to resign, his successor would also be one of us?

Richard Ravitch is best known for helping New York City out of its fiscal crisis in the 1970's and for cleaning up the state's transit system in the 80's. He also had a brief stint as the owner's rep during the scandalous Major League Baseball strike that canceled the 1994 World Series (which the Yankees surely would have won, by the way). Many also know him as a long-standing member of the state's business community, and he even ran for mayor back in 1988, when David Dinkins defeated him in the primary and went on to beat Rudy Giuliani, who later beat Dinkins... but let's stay on track, shall we?

Few New Yorkers are aware of the fact that Governor Paterson recently appointed Ravitch as the Lieutenant Governor of New York. (Paterson was himself the Lieutenant Governor; when he succeeded Spitzer, the position was left vacant.) This means that Ravitch would take over for Paterson. He wasn't elected, but then again, Paterson wasn't elected governor, and that's how the system works. Simple enough.

But even fewer New Yorkers are aware of the surprising link between Paterson and Ravitch: namely, their shared disability. Ravitch has suffered from adult-onset macular degeneration (the "old" version of my condition) since he turned 69, and his vision has been affected ever since. He was one of the lucky ones who got treated right away, but he no longer drives his own car, and he hires private aides to read the newspaper. Just like Paterson.

True, Ravitch spent most of his life as a fully sighted adult -- neither Paterson nor I can say that -- but it's still good to know that we'll still have representation in Albany. I was worried that there wouldn't be any blind people running things in the state government, and that the whole thing might become completely dysfunctional. Phew.

News of Ravitch's condition hasn't spread yet. It was reported today in the New York Herald Tribune, if you want to read more. (Sorry, can't find the link.) There's also speculation that Spitzer, Pataki, and the late Al Smith may have also couldn't see straight, but no evidence... yet.