Day 168

Kish me Goodnight.  Making SENSE of the world around us.

The day began for me at a somewhat non-traditional clip.  Now believing in the omens that present themselves to us daily, I took note of the fact that once again I find myself a bit out of balance.  Running my hand across the braille label on our cereal box this morning caused me a moment of reflection.  I am a very visual creature.  In fact, most of my world revolves around my ability to see.  This brief moment of thought over a bowl of Frosted Flakes would likely not be a highlight of my day, however, something compelled me to begin leafing through an old magazine I have had laying around the house for months.  I flipped open the pages and there before me was an article I had nearly forgotten about Daniel Kish.  Never heard of him?  He is a blind man that taught himself how to see.  Impossible you say?  Not in Mr. Kish’s vocabulary.  You see, he has developed a keen eye on his world through the use of echolocation.  I believe he refers to it at Flash Sonar, but the principals are the same.  A click from his tongue and the resulting echo produced from objects in his environment allow him to “see” the world with amazing clarity.  Believing that I was meant to re-read this article, I went ahead and took time out of my day to immerse myself in his story.  I won’t bore you with the details, but this seeming coincidence changed my outlook on the day.  Of our four senses, the honest truth of the matter is that our sight is the least important and perhaps the least powerful.  The human’s ability to hear so far outweighs its ability to see, it seems a pitty to me that what we “see” often gets in the way of what we “hear”.  Our ability to see is limited to but a single spectrum of light, appropriately called the “visual” spectrum.  UV and Infrared just to name a couple are completely undetectable by the human eye.  Our ability to hear however is not so limited.  Drawing a rough comparison, our ability to hear is not limited to a single octave, but something on the order of 8 to 10 depending how keen your ears are and what statistics you believe.  In addition, while I tell my children that I have eyes in the back of my head, this couldn’t be further from the truth.  I lack the ability to see anything directly to my rear without the aid of a mirror.  Our ability to hear, however, has no “blind” spot.  We hear in all directions and the milliseconds that a sound wave hits one ear before the next allows us to know where a given sound is coming from with virtually infallible accuracy.

Still don’t believe me that our other senses trump our ability to see, and our vision is often what blinds us to our world?  Answer me this . . . when you are really enjoying a piece of music, what is the first thing you do?  Close your eyes right?  It allows you to focus on what you hear without being distracted by the overbearing visual receptors in your brain.  The same can be said when we are enjoying something that has a truly fantastic taste.  Once again, you close your eyes.  And smell?  You guessed it.  Ever watch someone smell a bouquet of flowers with their eyes open?  Didn’t think so.  The realization that I was letting my vision blind me from some of the greatest and most subtle experiences of my life made me the brunt of some ugly jokes around my house this morning.  I flipped my magazine closed and ran upstairs for a shower.  From the moment I hit my bedroom door I closed my eyes and didn’t open them again until the completion of my morning beauty ritual (trophy husband, remember?).  Completing the simplest task with my eyes pinned shut was a humbling experience.  Humbling though it was, it seems that my visual memory made this much less tragic than it could have been.  In addition, the lack of a blindfold meant that I could sense subtle changes in light and shadow that a person born without sight would not be fortunate enough to make use of.  So, being a bit handicapped in the handicapped department lead to an even greater eye opening experience.  That being said, even though not completely enveloped in darkness and relying heavily on my visual memory of my environment this experiment put me much more in tune with the world than I realized.

I began with a shower.  I paced my way into the bathroom, cautiously fumbling for the door jamb and noticing the echo my breathing made in the resonating chamber that most bathrooms tend to be.  Disrobing . . . not a problem.  Gotten undressed in complete darkness plenty of times.  Using my hands to locate the shower door and eventually the faucet handles caused no major problems either.  Once again, my visual memory helped me along.  Same held true with regard to the location of the body wash and poof (that’s right body wash . . . trophy husband, remember?)  While the body wash was located on a shelf with many other products used by my wife, I was easily able to differentiate it by its tactile feel.  A fair bit of marketing has gone into these bottles to make them pleasing for the marketed gender.  The women’s product is soft and delicate, with gentle curvy lines.  The man’s product has traction and a more pistol grip feel.  The fragrance is final nail in the coffin.  Once again, my mind wanders to those television commercials with a dude in the shower smelling the suds created my his Irish Spring . . . EYES CLOSED!  I commenced to scrubbing the sleep from my body and realized that the open window over the shower lets in a tremendous amount of noise.  This isn’t something I had ever experienced before.  Ordinarily, the sound of the pouring water and the awe inspiring view from my shower window drown out the rest of the ambient noise.  I could now hear the birds, the wind in the trees and distant voices of cyclists as they traveled down the bike path near our home.  I could hear the life within our home as well.  The kids arguing downstairs and the wife shuffling papers and moving dishes.  Despite the rushing water, I felt as though I could hear a pin drop.  Overwhelmed by the sounds, I quickly finished my shower and went in search of a towel.  Knew where it was hanging, so reaching for it was without drama.  Things soon took a turn for the worse.  I exited the bathroom in search of my clothing and promptly broke three of my toes when they unexpectedly ran into a wooden rocking chair in the corner of the bedroom.  I stumbled forward and dove for where I believed the bed to be.  One inch or so short and I would have hit the floor.  The ungraceful pirouette caused my towel to give way and I lay there naked, half on and half off of the bed, clutching my throbbing toes.

I soon realized that it was taking all of my mental faculties, NOT to open my eyes.  The instinct to look at my injury was overwhelming.  I stayed strong and eventually the pain subsided.  I believe the force with which I smashed my toes and the fact that my lack of sight heightened my other senses caused the pain to linger for longer than it ordinarily would have.  Eventually I pulled myself together and searched around on the floor for my missing towel.  I soon regained my bearings and felt my way around the room to the dresser.  Another obstacle.  Finding matching clothes was going to be a bitch.  Fortunately, my wardrobe is not that diverse and my memory once again saved the day.  I pulled on a pair of cargo pants that I knew by feel and a t-shirt that I was certain would match.  How could I be so certain the t-shirt would be an appropriate color?  I am anal retentive.  I stack my t-shirts by color in my closet, so all I had to do was find the right pile.  I have three stacks, and the gray ones are straight up main street.  Done.  Again, like taking off the clothes, putting them on wouldn’t be a cause for concern.  Soon I would have to make my way back across the room and back into the bathroom for deodorant.  I would take this trip with much more caution than the last and kept my aching toes curled to prevent further injury.  Again, feel and smell would win out and my pits were soon as fragrant as the mountain air.  At least so says the packaging.  I decided to opt for some fragrance as well (trophy husband, remember?).  Located the bottle by feel and smell as I had with the deodorant, however, directing the spray in the right direction proved more challenging.  I couldn’t feel the small hole on she spray top with my fingers, so I had to use my sense of smell.  I put the top to my nose and amazingly, was able to locate the opening by the strength of the fragrance that seemed more concentrated where it exits the bottle.  Voila.  Mission complete.  I had three more tasks I wanted to complete before I opened my eyes.  Q-tip.  Check.  Tooth brush . . . shit.  It resides in a cup with the rest of the toothbrushes in the house.  Easy to differentiate between mine and the kids, but not so easy between mine and the wife’s because we use the exact same kind of tooth brush in two different colors.  Smell was of no help.  Both seemed fairly minty with just a hint of morning breath.  I would resort to touch on this one.  From prior conversations, I knew that I brush harder than my wife and destroy the head of my toothbrush to a level that she cannot match.  I felt around and found the one that had bristles that seemed to have been used to clean a toilet and assumed it was mine.  Found the paste and attempt to apply it sparingly to the head of my toothbrush.  While brushing my teeth with what turned out to be a mouthful of paste, I notice that my t-shirt didn’t feel right.  The wife was surely going to get an ear full if she was the one responsible for shrinking my shirt.  After I brushed my teeth I laid the toothbrush to the side so I could see if I had gotten it right when I re-opened my eyes.

Finally, with a fair bit of relief, I reached my last task.  The steam of the shower always makes my nose run, so I routinely blow my nose in the mornings.  Gross I know, but gotta clear the bats from the bell tower.  Ordinarily this is done in front of a mirror so as not to leave a man in the window, but I was going to have to take this one on faith.  Finally, finished.  Time to open my eyes and survey the damage other than my broken toes.  There I stood with shirt on backwards, a sink full of toothpaste and a booger hanging from my nose.  Thank God, I hadn’t tried to pee or we would be mopping up for days.  The upside?  I had in fact selected the correct toothbrush.  By the way, don’t tell my wife I fondled the top of her toothbrush, don’t think she would be too jazzed even though my hands were fresh from the shower.  I corrected all of the missteps and was ready to conquer the world.  Never again would I allow my sight to get in my way.  The world now seemed clearer than it had ever been.  Even with sight restored I could hear smell and taste everything to a level I never had before.  I rejoined the rest of my family in the kitchen after attempting one last feat without sight.  Somewhat less confident, but determined to end on a high note, I negotiated the narrow winding staircase with eyes wide shut.  Fortunately I didn’t break my neck, but it produced a lot of questions from the family.  Mostly “what the hell is wrong with you”.  They should know better than to ask by now.  Even though I felt as though I had lived an entire day already, our work was not nearly finished.  It was time to gather the troops and go buy some school supplies.  I was going to need all of my faculties for this project, so I decided it would be best to keep my eyes open for the remainder of the day.

After a few laughter filled minutes in the school supply isle, it dawned on me that I may as well have my eyes shut for this portion of the day as well, because deciphering the French shopping list was next to impossible even with my unfettered sight.  We fumbled around from isle to isle loading our cart down with enough paste and pencils to see both of our children through Graduate School and began to realize why tuition was so cheap.  We may well have to take out a second mortgage on our home in order to afford the 17 multi-colored notebooks required for the upcoming first day of school.  With his backpack this loaded down with supplies, I pray he doesn’t trip and turn turtle because he will likely perish on the sidewalk before he is ever able to right himself again.  As our patience was beginning to run thin, the youngest announced his need for a bathroom break and requested that mom provide the escort.  This left the eldest and myself to continue the purchasing.  Staring hopelessly at my list I moved to the next isle in search of some scissors.  The bustling crowd in the isle suddenly parted like the Red Sea and a ray of light sent down from heaven began to shine upon a familiar face.  Our very dear friend and colleague of my wife happened to be in the same store on the same day, purchasing school supplies for her eldest daughter.  I ran to her like Bo Derek ran to Dudley Moore and begged for guidance.  By the time my wife returned with the youngest, we were well on our way to filling the cart with the correct supplies.  My wife took back over and while I tended to the youngsters, she and our friend sorted out the difficult items on the list.  Another omen I thought to myself.  If I had my eyes shut, I wouldn’t have seen her in this crowded store.  Strange how life works.

That about does it for the day.  Hope you have enjoyed the more robust offering this evening.  It is time for this guy to get some well deserved rest.  In parting, I will ask you to indulge just one request.  As you yourself get in bed tonight, close your eyes, but don’t go to sleep.  Take a moment and lay there in the darkness.  Listen to your home, your heart and the world around you.  You will be amazed at what you can see when you open your eyes again come morning.