“So, what about me? I’m blind, so I don’t drive. I can totally text while using a cane or a dog guide, no problem!” I don’t need my eyes to text; I just listen to the letters spoken aloud. I don’t need both hands to use my cane/dog. It’s not like looking where I’m going will do me any good.
All of this does not add up to “I can text while working my dog/using my cane.” It adds up to “I can mindlessly push buttons while using my cane/working my dog.” Why do I say this? Because it’s not about freedom of appendages and eyes. It’s about attention.
You’re walking through the downtown area. The streets are all in this nice little grid pattern, very Roman and very convenient. All the traffic lights are timed so you can listen to parallel surges for your walk-sign cues. You know your route pretty well. You need to go seven blocks north and four west. You’re texting your best friend about how many bottles of soda and boxes of pizza you’ll need for the party. You finish texting and stop at a corner. “…ok…how many blocks have I gone in this direction?” You’ve lost count. Why? Because you were paying more attention to your texting than to your route. OR, you bump into someone and drop your phone—and have no idea where it is. It might have fallen into the road, into a planter, under a parked car…but you can’t find it. You shouldn’t have had it out in the first place. You should’ve been paying attention to your dog’s gentle tug to the left, or to your cane’s altered sound from brick sidewalk to soft mat telling you that you were approaching a doorway. OR, your dog just snapped up a bit of hot dog lying against a trashcan. Only…it wasn’t a hot dog. It was the butt of a cigarette, and that could make your dog sick. But you didn’t notice what it was or stop to pull your dog’s mouth open to find out because “I’m almost done, just a couple more letters.”
How did I discover this? None of these ways, but close. I walked across a street while texting a friend—I even had a good excuse! I was telling a friend about something cool I’d read in my Bible that morning! Surely that’s ok, right? It’s important! Not as important as looking up and realizing your dog just gave you a neat little traffic check before you walked out in front of the UPS truck bringing in care packages to your fellow poor starving college students! I should never have cued Prada to take me out into the crosswalk without stopping. Yeah, we did another California-stop. Still working on those. I should’ve been aware enough of my surroundings to hear the mechanical behemoth bearing down on us. Yay for Prada! She did her job, and I hereby vow to never text while working her again. Thanks, beautiful
As with most vows, I’ve since forgotten this. However, rereading and editing these blog posts serves the additional purpose of reminding me of training principals and safety concepts which I’ve neglected. Here’s me renewing my vow to not text while working with Prada.
No comments:
Post a Comment