The most surprising part about learning to navigate the world with very little sight is discovering how much of the heavy lifting has already been done, at least when it comes to making the world at least somewhat manageable. This is having a direct impact on my plans for international travel, not to mention my life in general.
Take stairs, for example. Missing a step is a very easy mistake when you can’t see the bottom of a staircase, so new staircases built to code today are designed so at the bottom, the rail levels out to be parallel with the floor at exactly the point where the last step ends. That way, you know you’re on level ground.
Here’s another one: I never noticed the little nubbin on the number “5” key on the remote control before now, but now I know it’s there as a tactile guide to orient a blind user around the other keys. You wouldn’t think keypads would be a challenge until you try to work them with your eyes closed. That little nubbin? Just incredibly useful. Are you listening, DirecTV? Because I’m talking to you.
Anyhoo…
In an earlier life, I was a reporter. Spend enough time in television news and you learn a few truisms. In no particular order, they are as follows:
- No matter how small the station you work for is, it only takes six hours of commercial broadcasting for that station to completely earn back your entire salary for the year. Keep that in mind when your contract comes up.
- When the assignment desk editor tells you “we’re switching gears,” it never means your day is about to get easier.
- Any story can be turned into the lead if you add the phrase “it’s a parent’s worst nightmare.”
- The only way to get out of a live shot is to say you saw lightning.
- When a photographer asks you why you don’t have a pen, don’t ever say, “You’re my pen.”
- If you can’t get a real interview, get an MOS (man on the street) bite. Your producer won’t notice or, likely, care.
The most useful truism, however, and one which I’ve already ignored in this post is this: don’t bury the lead. Forgive me, Uncle Walter, for I have sinned. So I’d better get on with it.
I’m going to explore the world, and I’d like everyone to come with me.
Well, maybe not everyone, per se, but I am going to make it as easy as possible for everyone to follow along.
True confession: there is only one thing in my life that is truly embarrassing to me, and it’s the fact that as of this writing, I have never traveled outside of the United States. Not one step. I’ve been to 48 states (sorry, Hawaii and Delaware, I’m working on it) but there are zero stamps in my passport. I just never put a priority on international travel, and let time pass.
What bothers me the most is that there isn’t any grand, noble or otherwise overriding reason for this lapse. I’m hardly George Bailey, sacrificing college, my honeymoon and that enormous twenty thousand dollars a year salary so Mr. Potter won’t get his sweaty hands on the Building and Loan. I just… let life happen. I spent my twenties trying to climb the ladder. I spent my thirties creating a business. Now here I am with all those, as they say, best laid plans in the rear view mirror, and life turned out more than a little differently.
There were opportunities. The college kid who was going to bike across Italy but took the job in South Dakota instead? That was me, being all grown up and whatnot. The twenty eight year old who was going to take the job with the internet startup that needed experienced reporters in Asia? That guy played it safe and went to Memphis instead because it was a three year contract with no shooting and a dental plan. The thirty nine year old who was bound and determined to fly to Australia on the day before his fortieth birthday and who, thanks to the international date line, would land in Sydney on the day after his birthday, forever enabling him to say he didn’t have a fortieth birthday? He spent that week looking for apartments n Oakland with a woman he broke up with nine weeks later, and has been single ever since.
Regrets? Sing it, Frank, because I’ve had a few.
My passport isn’t so much a useful document as it is a living being sitting in a drawer with my Home Depot card, a coupon for fifteen percent off my next purchase at Bed, Bath and Beyond and a box of paper clips, quietly mocking me as I search for extra batteries. It might even be expired. I honestly don’t know. The closest it ever came to actually being used was when I was scheduled to accompany a local Air Force unit to Ramstein AFB in Germany, their staging area for sorties over Afghanistan. When the deployment was shelved, so was the passport. I still haven’t been past the water’s edge.
This ends now
It starts, of course, with a story. Conveniently enough, crayons are involved.
Really, everything you need to know about me begins and ends with the fact that, as a child, I was so buttoned down that even my crayons had to be stored in a certain order. I don’t know how old I was the first time someone gave me a box of crayons, but I do remember the order the colors were in when I opened the box. Red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown, black. Of course, the order was based on nothing more than the haphazard way whichever kid came before me had stuffed them into the box, but being the somewhat fastidious (!) child that I was, I assumed this was the way crayons were supposed to go. Red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown, black, Every time. It’s been the default way I’ve thought about the color spectrum ever since.
This is all the more vexing to the right side of my brain since, for the entirety of my professional career, I’ve worked in a world of color, and should know better. Color wheels, color temperatures, color correction. Any way you slice it, there is no system of color calibration where red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown and black makes any sense, but if you ask me to sort anything by color – from crayons to clothing, my default method would rip the spectrum into nonsensical shreds. I know it doesn’t make sense. It just is.
You know what? This 43 and still single thing? Starting to make a bit more sense, is all I’m saying.
However, it occurs to me there may be some use for this completely arbitrary thinking of color, and a way to press the reset button on what until now is one of the more egregious errors in my life. If for the foreseeable future, my visual world is composed of fogs and blurs, distortions and warps, shapes and colors, then it would seem like a good idea to use at least some of those elements in a positive way.
Or at least one of them.
OK, I say. If colors are one of the primary distinguishing factors In my visual landscape, then let those colors be the framework around which the world will open up. And let’s do it in the order that feels natural to me. Red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown, black. If I want to feel the heat of Australia’s red center, why not go? If the ocean is calling, why not listen? If I want to see the expanse of the desert and cross the fields of Ireland, is there a good reason not to? I have all my faculties and, for now, five… well, if it were a dollar amount, I’d call it somewhere around $4.12, so let’s say four and change… of my senses. Am I really going to just sit around and wait for that to become an even four before deciding what to do next?
The truth is that I have some sight left today, and I may not tomorrow. Literally. While I don’t discount the value of exploring the world from a completely sightless perspective (Erik Weihenmayer, anyone?), the “glass half full” side of my psyche says I’ve been given a great gift. In the face of the only truth that matters… that time is fleeting. I think I have to acknowledge that this rather unfortunate turn of events is also an opportunity.
So I’m doing this. I’m putting together a team, and I’m doing this. I’m convinced that there is a way to tell the stories I want to tell, and with at least some of the tools from my past, present and future to guide me. It’s a mouthful, but here’s one more bite. I’m convinced that I can do more than just what would amount to an extended vacation. There is, to skewer a phrase, a mission to my madness, and to do what news folk call “teasing ahead” some good to be done for others as well. If you’ll stick around, I think we can do a little bit of exploring, and a lot of good for a lot of people too
We’ll do it one color at a time.
