Lost In the Gym

A couple of weeks ago I went to the gym and almost everything had been rearranged since my last visit.  I know what you’re thinking.  “That’s what he gets for only going once every six months.”  But it had only been two days.

Looking down, I noticed the carpet was cleaner.  If I was able to tell the difference it must have been pretty dirty before.  They must have taken the opportunity to put those heavy machines—with their seats, bars, and stacks of weights—in a formation that made more sense.  For me, it was like a bad Helen Keller joke.  I spent a few minutes after using each one I needed to slowly spin around, looking for the one I needed next.

It made me feel a little self-conscious until I saw that I wasn’t the only one.  A few people even said stuff like, “I can’t find anything either.”  If misery loves company, so do blind folks.  I decided I would give myself some extra time each time I went until I memorized where everything was.

I really like the health club that I use.  It’s been at the current location two years.  The building was once a six-screen cinema.  I’ve lived in a former printing building, a former Catholic church, and a former carriage house.  I like old buildings that are remade into something different than their original function.  This one was originally a two-screen cinema when it was built in the 1970s.  The first movie I ever saw there was Star Wars.  Looking at in now, you would never guess what it had been before.

A week after the rearrangement, I was using a machine to work out my legs.  I hate working out my legs and I take unusually long breaks between sets.  Looking around, I finally realized the system they’d used when they moved everything.  There was a long, wide aisle running the length of the room.

Sometimes when we bother to look up at the bigger picture, we notice things are more orderly than we thought.

You Don't Have to Be A Standout to Be Somebody

Thanks to Facebook I was invited to the 30 year reunion for the class I went to school with, but didn’t graduate with.  Midway through 11^th grade my family moved.  That didn’t matter to those who planned the reunion.  It was about the shared experience of growing up here.

There were over 400 who graduated from FHS in 1982.  I wasn’t involved in any activities, wasn’t athletic, or a standout by any definition of the word.  I doubted many people would even remember me.  In addition to that, the big hairstyle of that era has been replaced by a crewcut and mostly relocated to my face in the form of a beard.

That tiny insecure voice inside told me to be ready for someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, “You didn’t actually graduate with us, so you have to leave.”

It also told me to be ready in case someone copped an attitude with me, like a high school student would.  Health issues (some potentially fatal), life in some big cities, vision loss, life in a couple of large cities with vision loss have all created a much less easily intimidated version of me than the one people might remember in high school.  I’ve had to learn to stand up for myself over the years.

Then a different tiny voice told me that time and maturity hasn’t ignored all those people.  It told me to just expect a good time.  Never mind the high odds of me being the only legally blind one there.  Or the only one with a couple of transplanted organs.  I might not be the most enviable one there, but I was pretty sure I had the most atypical life.

Three weeks before the reunion, I had my gall bladder removed along with a hernia repair.  I was down 15 pounds, which would have been a blessing for some, but not in my case.  In just a few weeks I went from being in the best shape of my life to the same scrawny body I had in high school.  It was a chore to find clothes that didn’t hang off me.  Everybody wants to look at these things, whether it’s been 10 years or 70. 

Yes, I was a little self-conscious beforehand about being the only visually-impaired one there.  But, that's almost always the case and I'm finally coming to terms with it.  Besides, most of the others have to use reading glasses these days.  I guess that makes me a trendsetter.

I had a good time.  People walked up and spoke to me, so it didn’t matter that I couldn’t see across the room.  I said, “You actually remember me?” about a dozen times.  The usual response was, “Of course I do.”

When I said that to Ziva, followed by, “I was such a nobody,” she looked me in the eye and said, “Everybody is somebody.”  This from one of the cool, tall, pretty chicks back in high school who I didn’t really know back then.  I had approached her wanting to connect with a fellow writer.

The next thing I knew, I was having a great time with her, Jinger, and Lisa (more cool, pretty girls who were at the reunion) on Dickson Street.  I expected to see old friends that night, but never expected to make new ones of people I hadn’t known back then.

Since then, I’ve done a little revising on the history book in my head.  I already knew that sometime since 1982, I had become somebody.  It turns out you don’t have to be a standout to be somebody and more people notice you than you think.

Now I stand out without really trying and not for the reasons I would have chosen.  Now I’m somebody because of that.  But it turns out I was somebody all along.   

My L.A. Odyssey Part II: Exactly Where God Wanted Me to Be

Thursday morning, the conference starts.  There are a whole lot of people.  I sit next to a spirited, outgoing woman in her 50s who is a bit of a mother hen to me.  In light of the huge crowd, extra drinking water at a distance, and speech at which the information comes at us, I accept her doting gladly. 

James is a dynamic speaker and right away, my brain is cooking, coming up with ways to implement his advice to my own situation.  I’m having ideas like never before.  Just as I suspected, a clearer picture of my future starts to gel.  Not only are all the parts taking shape, but I’m getting the sequence it should come together.  By the end of the first day, I feel like I’ve learned a week’s worth.

During the breaks, people spot my cane and offer to help me get around.  They’re interested in my life story and my plans for sharing it.  For the first time, I realize my visual limitations make me more interesting, not less so, like I believed for years.  Here and there, I get bits of advice, which breed even new ideas.  I’m totally in my element.  This was one of the most sublime times of my life.  Why?

Because I knew I was exactly where I was meant to be, doing exactly what I was put here to do.

Telling my story, telling the stories of others, giving hope, and really making a difference in the lives of thousands--it’s was God has chosen for me to do and when I’m doing it on a larger scale, the feeling is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced.

Finally, I was getting usable advice about how to market myself, how to think on a much larger scale than I have before.  It was an up-close look at a future that is both easier and more successful.

On the second day, Cuba Gooding Jr. speaks about having a mission.  It was a good talk but I’ve already had mine in mind for a while.  I donate 10 percent of the What Makes Us Stronger line to charities and organizations helping people recovery from a life crisis.

Later, Steadman Graham speaks on the importance of defining our unique self.  This resonates with me.  I’ve only recently come to terms with my extremely unique life and how I don’t fit into any category.  Not long before flying out to L.A. I realized there’s more freedom than isolation in that because I get to define what a middle-aged legally blind ex-diabetic writer with a kidney/pancreas transplant looks like.  Me.  I own it.  I define it.

At the conference, I have a light-hearted self-acceptance I haven’t felt since college.  The notion finally hits home that, even legally blind, middle-aged, with two transplanted organs to take care of, I can still have off-the-wall kind of fun I hadn't had since I was younger and I had better eyesight.  It turns out a long-lost side of myself was hiding at the LAX Westin.

Streadman Graham gives me plenty of things to write down.  This would be the high point of the Boot Camp.  How ironic that my sitiation would take a huge plunge.

Next: Seismic Jolt 

The Ghost of Vision Past: The Pain of Remembering

Over the weekend I attended a conference in Memphis.  It was the first time I’d been there since 2001, when I lived in Little Rock.  Some friends invited me along for an overnighter including a show at the beautifully restored Orpheum Theater, followed by some nightlife fun.  If you like architecture and you get a chance to see a show there, do it!  Even if you’re not interested in the show, it’s worth it.  I don’t get over there often.  It’s at least a five-hour drive from this part of the Ozarks.

It was one of those conferences with “breakout” sessions going on in different meeting rooms.  You look at a schedule and decide which one looks like your best bet or take a break if none appeals to you.  You can mingle in a common area and nibble the finger food set out on a long table.  Sounds simple enough, right?

It was simple for me back when my vision was better.  Now I have to use a high-tech magnifier (it cost $600) to read the schedule and get help finding the room I needed.  Finding a seat wasn’t hard, but seeing Powerpoint presentations was impossible.  Sometimes I could tell what the speaker was was talking about on the screen, other times I couldn’t.  I needed help identifying food set out on the snack table and again during the buffet-style meals.  People were happy to help, but it made me self-conscious to slow down a line of hungry people behind me.  I made it a point to get in line early, not only because view a buffet line as prey, but also so I could find an unoccupied seat without having to roam around a crowded dining room with a plateful of food.

While making polite conversations with others at my table, I also had to identify food, spear it with my fork, and mind my table manners.  At one meal, the salad was overloaded with olives, which I hate.  I had to eat several because they were In my mouth before I knew what they were.  By the end, my food was jumbled up together on the plate and I thought back on the brief phase I went through when I was a kid, when I didn’t want any of the food to touch each other.

But, the biggest and most isolating change that happened when my vision wosened in 2003 was losing the ability to recognize faces and expressions more than a couple of feet away.  Because of that, I can be very alone in a crowd—even when people are extremely warm and friendly, like they were last weekend.

I have an excellent sense of direction, an internal compass that almost never fails.  But, in order for it to work, I need to get a good look at my surroundings.  To get to my room from the elevator, I had to make a couple of sharp turns and it left me disoriented, then frustrated, then angry because I can remember when things were easier.  Sunday morning, I wanted breakfast and remembered the nearest restaurant was across a four-lane street and was buffet-style.  Not worth the risk.  I found a small room on my floor with vending machines.  The one with food was framed in bright lights so I had to lean in and squint even more than I usually do.  This particular machine had a flashing keypad, though.  The bulb didn’t have a short.  It was designed to light up a row at a time in quick succession, giving it the look of a slot machine that paid winners in sweet and salty snacks.  Do they really need to lure people—particularly Americans—to a vending machine with flashing lights? 

I gave up and went back to my room, glad I had snagged a cookie from a table the day before and saved it.

I wanted to look around at the urban landscape of a bigger city, even if we didn’t drive through any particualry interesting parts of it.  I wanted to be able to navigate the common areas without it feeling like an expedition.  I wanted to find the Men’s Room all by myself like a big boy.

Yes, people find me inspiring, and I hope that continues.  I’m comfortable around the house and around the town where I live.  Being in unfamiliar places is more work for me now.  I work harder to see things.  I have to commit things to memory faster.  I come back from a two-day conference exhausted, physically and emotionally—because I can remember when life was much easier.  I was legally blind before, but barely.  I got around with little trouble.  Even my friends occasionally forgot I had vision problems.

Today, I’m starting to feel like myself again.  I’m at the brink of an exciting future that includes speaking engagements, a published memoir, an inspirational web site, a YouTube channel, and probably more income to go with it all.  I’m focusing on that as best I can, letting The Ghost of Accomplishments Future save me from The Ghost of Vision Past.

Savant? Or Just Blind Memory?

Sometimes I forget how hard it is for people with normal vision to remember things.  I don’t see well enough to use a smart phone and the address book in my 2007 model flip phone is as empty as Kim Kardashian’s head.  Sure, it would be nice to be able to store and then find phone numbers in there, but the font size isn’t large enough for me. 

From what I’ve observed, everyone stores everything on their phone now.  Nobody has to actually remember a number.  Nobody, that is, except people like me.  I was reminded of this last Sunday night.  A friend of mine I talk to every two or three weeks was surprised I remembered his number.  We were at my house and I told him I remember numbers I called frequently from several years ago.

“I still remember the number for J C Penny and I worked there back in the 80s,” I bragged.  “Well, and again briefly in the 90s when they built the new one.”  To prove it, I grabbed my cordless land-line phone (yes, I still have one of those) and called the number.  The recorded message was loud enough for both of us to hear with me holding the phone up.

Maybe I’m a savant.  I don’t know.  It’s always been easy for me to remember numbers, even before the vision loss.

These days, it’s easier for me to memorize a number than look  it up.  Most people could do the same thing if they tried.  They just don’t have to.

I’m leery of paying bills online.  But I’ve never heard of anyone hacking into a phone system, so I pay credit card bills that way.  I have quite a few toll-free numbers stored in my head.  I can enter the credit card number without looking, along with the PIN.  If they wouldjn’t change that stupid 3-digit code on the back each time they send a new card, I would make the effort to remember that too.

I remember the numbers to several friends, the renal specialist, ophthalmologist, chiropractor, oncologist, cable company, taxi, my parents (home and cell), the transit office, my landlord, bank (the main branch and the toll-free number to check my balance), my checking account number, and the number for the time and temperature. 

That last one I've had memorized since I was a kid.  On snow days, we called it over and over to make sure the temperature hadn't risen above freezing.

What?  You can’t do that?  Now it’s my turn to feel sorry for you.

There are several other numbers I remember most of, which gets me some interesting wrong places the first time or two I guess.

I’ve heard people say, “I lost my phone and it had all my numbers stored in it.”  You’ll never hear me say, “I lost my head and I had all my numbers stored in it.”  I do, but if I lose it, I won’t be able to talk.

Yesterday I activated a new card from a big box store.  There was a glitch and I had to enter it a second time.  After that, I had it memorized.  If I call it a few more times over the new couple of years, it’ll be stuck in there with the number for J C Penney.

Maybe all the memorization will keep my mind sharp well into old age.  Follow my blog for another 25 years and we’ll find out together!