When I was a senior in high school I tried to join the football team so I could workout with them before wrestling season started. The coaches wouldn't let me join because they were afraid if I ran into one of the sighted players I might hurt them and they didn't want players sidelined because of an injury that shouldn't have happened.
I figured football was all about running into each other but the way they argued my point was to appeal to my ego and at that time it worked. Wow they're afraid of me! We didn't have a great football program and to think I could have knocked someone out for a season was definitely inspirational. And it got me out of their way and they only had that one season to worry about ----- Original Message ----- From: Dale Leavens To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 10:23 PM Subject: Re: [BlindHandyMan] Dealing with people Well, when faced with Janet and I there isn't anyone else to talk to. Janet looks just plain mean so they turn to me. The thing which is so often overlooked in these discussions is how unreasonable it is to expect the blind person to perform at a level of safety beyond the sighted. While I have no interesting in cutting off a finger or two it is unreasonable to expect that I cannot have the same accident or inattention at a critical moment that the sighted person doing the same task might have. Is the blind person more likely to get cancer from smoking than the sighted person? I once had to sigh a waver for income protection insurance back when I was in private practice that visual impairment would not be a claim for total disability. While I had no trouble with that concept I was bothered by not getting a premium discount reasoning that vision loss was a liability the company would never have in my case so a risk I shouldn't be paying for. Needless to say the insurance company didn't agree. One argument proposed was that I would be more likely to be accidentally injured because of my blindness. I asked for statistics pointing out that I most commonly traveled either on foot or by public transport which is statistically the safest, that I hardly ever drive or fly aircraft or other dangerous sports and so on.Of course Dan climbs perfectly inoffensive rocks and jumps out of perfectly good aircraft but I never do. Oh well, the world isn't necessarily fair. What ever the ignorant think of me is probably kinder than what I think of them and when I am able to remain mature enough to hide my feelings I also demonstrate my superiority to myself and anyone else observing. The only near reasonable argument I ever heard in my little shop class story was that I might pose some risk to others while moving about the shop. Certainly I could probably walk into the end of a board someone was pushing through a jointer although given the roar of most of that sort of equipment I doubt I would miss the possibility. ----- Original Message ----- From: Dan Rossi To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 9:23 PM Subject: Re: [BlindHandyMan] Dealing with people I tried to take a shop class through the local community college. After the first night, I got a call from the school saying that I couldn't take the class. Both Teresa and I were signed up for three classes each, several hundred bucks worth of classes. I said that if I couldn't take shop class, I wanted the money back for all six classes, both Teresa and me. They countered with forcing me to sign a waiver. I grudgingly agreed, but realized pretty quickly I wasn't going to get anywhere in the class, the instructor really wanted nothing to do with me. So I stopped going, and vowed that I would never sign another waiver. I realized later that it was a stupid request. This class was for anyone. Any idiot could walk in off the street, with several fingers missing from previous shop accidents, and take the class without signing a waiver. But I had to. Screw that! I love some of the stories you guys have told about your spouses or girlfriends responses when people start talking to them. Teresa is far too timid to say anything like that, typically I just ignore their stupidity and start answering them. They eventually get the idea. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (412) 268-9081 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
