The Much-Dreaded Spill

The Much-Dreaded Spill

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The Braille Monitor – February, 2001 Edition

The Much-Dreaded Spill

by Chris Kuell

Chris Kuell

From the

Editor: Some years ago now, before food processors were made more or less idiot-proof,

I reached into mine to try to make some vegetables stand up again so that I

could create thin slices. In my efforts to grab hold of the fallen, I managed

to turn on the motor, and the spinning disk then demonstrated just how well

it could slice by taking off the end of my index finger. I immediately realized

that I needed to get to the hospital, but my first reaction was a mixture of

astonishment and fury at my stupidity. I had known perfectly well what could

happen, but a split-second's inattention had caused permanent modification of

my hand. I was just lucky that I had been the victim and not someone else. I

wanted in the worst way to live those seconds over again, but we don't often

get those second chances.

Chris Kuell is an up-and-coming leader in the Connecticut affiliate. He
is bright and energetic. He is also very thoughtful about the process of coming
to terms with blindness. Many of us have grappled with the emotions he talks
about in the following story. Perhaps his insight will help others to deal with
their own emotional roller coasters. This is what he says:

It happened again this morning, a different scenario with the same result.
The breakfast dishes were cleared from the table, and I was using a damp cloth
to wipe crumbs into my hand before depositing them into the trash. I wasn't
focused on the task, just going through motions I had performed a thousand times
before, when I felt a slight pressure against the knuckle of my right thumb.
My brain leapt back to the current moment, processing and interpreting what
was happening. A glass, left stranded in a corner by my three-year-old daughter,
had evaded my pre-wipe scan, which I performed just moments ago. The glass launched
over the edge of the table. My reflexes, still pretty good, I stabbed my left
hand out into the void in an attempt to retrieve the doomed glass. I touched
it ever so briefly along its descent but wasn't even close to catching it. Pulling
out an old soccer move, I shot out my foot in an attempt to prevent the impending
crash. I succeeded only in jolting the cup and splattering it's contents over
a larger area. Then, in a final blow to my ego, the glass shattered into tiny
little shards on the recently washed kitchen floor. In a fraction of a second
a peaceful morning had been changed into a thankless job of sweeping and vacuuming
the floor; washing down the table, chairs, and floor; and removing the glass
fragments from sticky, pulpy orange juice.

An amazing transformation then occurred within me. I immediately became enraged.
"How could you be so stupid?" I yelled at myself. "Now, what
a mess! This is going to take forever to clean up!" I knew I had to do
a really good job of cleaning because my family walks around barefoot most of
the time. My blood pressure rose, and I felt such aggravation that I had to
yell profanities through clenched teeth. Boy, I hate it when this happens!

This was not the first time this Jekyll and Hyde transition has overtaken me;
it happens more often than I'd like to admit, when I spill or break things.
I tried to get myself under control, knowing how ridiculous it was to feel anger
and simultaneously hearing the distant voice of my mother saying, "No need
to cry over spilled milk." But still it persisted, this dormant anger within
me surfacing in an instant like an erupting volcano. Where does it come from?
Am I really like this? Most of the time I am a fairly carefree, even-tempered
guy. Am I abnormal or psychotic? After I had finished cleaning up the mess and
my blood pressure had returned to normal, I settled in to wash the unbroken
dishes and contemplate this rage.

My excessive feelings of aggravation are due in part to my high expectations
of myself. I hate to make mistakes. However, there is also a part that takes
me back to the time not long ago when I first lost my sight. For me the transition
from the sighted world into blindness was difficult. I had trouble accepting
my loss of vision and problems adjusting to a sightless world. There were the
physical challenges of mobility, reading, and finding things, to name just a
few. With time, creativity, and adequate training, I resolved these issues.
The mental and emotional challenges, for me, were much more difficult.

I am somewhat ashamed to admit that, before I lost my sight, I had never known
a blind person and shared some of the misconceptions believed by many sighted
people. When I first became blind I had no concept of what blind people could
accomplish, and I felt inferior. For the first several months after I lost my
vision I dwelled on the loss of my sight, consumed by feelings of sorrow and
inadequacy. I moped about, banging into things, hurting myself, and making messes
by knocking things off the table. To put it candidly, I was miserable.

Then, with some not-so-gentle prodding from my wife, I began to get my act
together again. I knew I had a long life ahead of me and a family who needed
me, so I had better find out how blind people do it--building happy and productive
lives. I made a point to meet with several members of our state NFB, and with
that encounter I turned the corner on my depression. I met blind people who
were living examples of the truth that people could get along fine without sight.
They answered my many questions about how to do things that had baffled me and
gave me hope that one day soon I, too, could be independent. I started to work
harder at my blind skills and reached out to as many blind people as I could
to pick their brains regarding blindness issues. As I grew more competent and
confident, I found that rather than thinking of my vision loss one hundred percent
of the time, I was doing so thirty, then twenty percent of the time. I stopped
thinking of myself as blind but rather as just me.

What does any of this have to do with spilled orange juice, broken glass, and
my maniac within? The sensible part of my brain realizes that sighted people
knock things over all the time as well, perhaps even more than blind people
do. And it is really not a traumatic event. So what's the deal with the outburst
of anger?

It is simply that I have spent a lot of time and energy trying to destroy feelings
of inferiority, to accept blindness for what it really is. The spill took me
back a few steps, and I was lashing out against the perceived retreat.

To be honest, events like this morning happen less and less often. I would
say I now think about being blind maybe fifteen percent of the time, and that
time is mostly productive as I help out in my local NFB chapter or try to offer
support to others who are losing their vision. Perhaps it is even a good thing
to have an occasional reminder that I'm blind, that blindness can be an evolutionary
change for the previously sighted. It is a challenge that can be overcome, and
a tremendous amount of strength and insight can be gained from the experience.

My wife still thinks I'm a bit of a lunatic, but that has little to do with
spilling. And I certainly can't promise I won't explode the next time I knock
a glass over. But I commit to trying always to do better. Hopefully I can turn
the energy into positive action--or at least spectacularly clean floors! And
on the bright side, I now have fewer dishes to wash.

Now, where is that sponge?

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