It's been a weird day.
My boss called me in to her office to talk about one project or another. There's nothing weird about that - she often calls me in to give me direction on an upcoming project. And, like always, she got off topic and started talking about other work-related things. Unfortunately, this is when I usually start zoning out. It's nothing against my boss. I love her dearly, and I am happy to lend a sympathetic ear for her to vent about this or that. In fact, I consider it a critical component of my job, as my manager is one of the best I've ever had, and her quitting would be a catastrophe of massive proportions. So, I hold a "wide open door" policy with regards to her need to get frustrations off of her chest.
However, these lamentations rarely hold my attention as they should, and I often find my eyes wandering to the windows, which span two of her four office walls. Being on the second floor of a corner building, there's usually lots to look at: emergency vehicles speeding by, cars lined up waiting for geese to lazily make their way across the streets, and, if you're lucky, a car pulled over by a young, bored, and therefore jerk-face Voorhees cop.
But on this particular day, I saw something a bit more interesting. A blind person (or should I say "visually challenged person"? What's the PC term here?) was making his way down the sidewalk. I guess there's nothing that strange about seeing a blind person walking, unattended, down a sidewalk, but something was different about this individual. It took me a moment to realize that the vision was so strange because the person was...quite frankly...AWFUL at using his cane to guide himself. While I truly marvel at blind people's ability to use a simple telescoping stick to determine exactly where they are in their environment (seriously, nothing but respect), I guess I never really considered the learning curve involved in the utility of this apparatus. I could only assume this person was a novice cane-user by the way he hesitatingly made his way down the sidewalk. Cane swinging in front of him, he slowly listed to the right. I clearly saw his cane make contact with the grass lining the sidewalk, but I guess my sense of vision was better than his sense of touch, because he took two complete steps into the grass before he stopped, probed his footing, and redirected himself back to the concrete walkway. Not long after that he began listing to the left. The cane caught on the edge where the curb met the sidewalk, skipping into mid air. Undeterred, the blind man continued on his course towards the drop-off to the street, and I found myself twisting my body to the right, willing him away from the disasterous path he had chosen. As luck would have it, he placed a foot half on, half off of the curb, and, realizing the situation, again repositioned himself.
At this point, anything my boss was saying was lost to this horror scene unfolding before me. Why was this obviously inexperienced blind person wandering unassisted? I considered the possible situations -that he was drunk, mentally retarded, or faking me out for the sake of some hidden-camera show. Regardless of the explanation, I was held completely captive. It was like seeing someone tied to the railroad tracks, watching a train approach, helpless to interfere. The man was fast running out of sidewalk, approaching a busy rode of two-lane traffic, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was not quite "road-ready," as it were. I must have begun to cringe, because I noticed a silence in the room, and found my boss looking at me with the most bewildered look on her face. I explained the situation, and she turned. This guy now had two captive audience members, and was a few feet away from his doom. As we considered the possibility of getting outside and warning this man of his failed trajectory before it was too late....it was suddenly too late. We cringed and "aah"ed and "ooh"ed as his final step missed the curb completely and dropped onto the road. I covered my face. It was surly the end of him!!!!
And then...miraculously, he backtracked and was safely on the curb. He must have finally felt and heard the whoosh of the traffic and came to his senses (all 4 of them. lol. okay, not funny. but kind of). He was Alive! He was Safe! We cheered and clutched our chests and conjectured on what would have happened had he continued on his path. We checked on our friend a moment later and found him shuffing along the path, veering haphazardly, back from whence he came. I'd like to think that he made his way back home safely, without incident. But I'll admit that my confidence in this man's ability to navigate is all but shattered, and I have serious concerns regarding his current whereabouts. I'm having images of him alone, in the wilds (of Voorhees), at night, hopelessly lost and wandering, wolves (dangeous Voorhees wolves) on his tail and closing in for the kill.
Okay, that's probably not the case, but if I hear emergency vehicles gathering somewhere on Laurel road, I get the feeling I'm going to know the reason.
Like I said, it's been a weird day.
