Don't Throw The Nickel

Don't Throw The Nickel

That is the introduction. Now for the article. As I have already said,
it is called "Don’t Throw the Nickel."

Don't Throw The Nickel

When is it appropriate for a blind person to accept help from a sighted
person, and when is it not? If the offer is rejected, how can it be done without causing
embarrassment or hurt feelings? Since most sighted people are well-disposed toward the
blind, these are very real questions-questions that I as a blind person have faced all of
my life. As you might imagine, my answers have changed as I have grown older and gained
experience.

When I was a teen-ager, filled with the typical self-consciousness of
adolescence, I frequently rode city buses. This was in Nashville. The school for the
blind, where I was a student, was located on the edge of the city, and I liked to go
downtown. Incidentally, in those days a bus ride cost a nickel, as did a lot of other
things-a hamburger, a Coca Cola, an order of French fries, a full-size candy bar, a
double-dip of ice cream, and much else.

One day I was standing on the corner waiting for a bus when an elderly
woman approached me and said, "Here, son, I’ll help you." She then put a
nickel into my hand.

I could tell that she was elderly because of her voice. There was quite
a crowd at the bus stop, and I felt acute embarrassment. I tried to give the nickel back,
but she moved out of my way and kept saying, "No, that’s all right."

Everybody stopped talking, and my frustration mounted. Each time I
stepped toward her to try to give back the nickel, she moved out of the way. It must have
been quite a spectacle, me with my hand extended holding the nickel, and the woman weaving
and dodging to avoid me. Finally, in absolute exasperation, I threw the nickel as far as I
could down the street.

That was over fifty years ago, but the memory is still clear. Once the
woman had placed the nickel in my hand, there was really no way I could have given it
back. If I had simply and quietly accepted it and thanked her, very little notice would
have been taken. As it was, I created quite a show. The elderly woman, who was only trying
to help me, was undoubtedly embarrassed, and I did little to improve the image of
blindness. Instead, I did the exact opposite.

Ten years later, when I was in my twenties, I was teaching at the
California training center for the blind in the San Francisco Bay area. One of my
principal duties was to help newly blind persons learn how to deal maturely with loss of
sight and the attitudes of the public about blindness.

Late one afternoon, after a particularly hard day, I was leaving the
Center to go home. When I came to the corner to cross the street, an elderly man (he
sounded as if he might be in his eighties) approached me and said, "I’ll help
you across the street."

"No, thanks," I said. "I can make it just fine." I
was polite but firm.

"I’ll help you," he repeated, and took my arm. As I have
already said, it had been a hard day. I made no discourteous response, but I speeded up my
pace as we crossed the street.

Clearly the man could not keep up, and if I am to be honest, I knew
that he couldn’t. He released my arm and said with a hurt tone, "I was only
trying to help."

When I got to the other side of the street, I came to a complete stop
and said to myself, "Are you really so insecure about your blindness that, even if it
has been a hard day, you can’t afford to be kind to somebody who was only trying to
help you?"

As with the nickel-throwing incident, there was a lesson to be learned.
I should have accepted the man’s offer of help, and should have done it graciously.
We would both have profited, each feeling that he had done the other a kindness. As it
was, both of us experienced pain, even if only a little and even if only temporarily.

By the time another ten years had passed, I was in my thirties and
directing programs for the blind in the state of Iowa. My job required me to do a great
deal of traveling, and one day when I was checking into a hotel, a bellman carried my bag
to my room. As he was leaving, I gave him a tip.

"Oh, no," he said, "I couldn’t take a tip from you.
I’m a Christian."

Unlike what I did in the other situations I have described, I did not
refuse or resist. I simply thanked him and let it go at that. Of course, I might have
tried to get him to change his mind, but I didn’t think it would be productive. And
besides, I didn’t feel so insecure or unsure of myself that I needed to prove either
to him or me that I was equal.

So far, I have talked about help that has been courteously offered and
probably should have been accepted. But what about the other kind? Blind people don’t
have a monopoly on rudeness or bad manners. Sighted people are human, too.

I think of a time when I was standing on a street corner in Des Moines,
minding my own business and waiting for a friend. A big husky fellow with the momentum of
a freight train came along and scooped me up without ever even pausing. "Come on,
buddy," he said, as he grabbed my arm, "I’ll help you across the
street."

As it so happened, I didn’t want to cross that street. I was going
in another direction. But he didn’t ask. And he wouldn’t listen when I tried to
tell him. He just kept walking and dragging me with him.

In the circumstances, I planted my feet and resisted-and I should have.
All of us, whether blind or sighted, owe courtesy and consideration to each other, but in
this case I was being treated like a none too intelligent child. No, worse than that-for
children are rarely manhandled in public.

Not long ago I entered an elevator, and a man standing next to me
reached out and placed his hand on my arm, between me and the elevator door, in a
protective manner. He probably felt that I might lean into the door as it was closing or
that I might have difficulty when the door opened. It was a sheltering gesture, totally
inappropriate but meant to be helpful. He would have been shocked at the thought of
behaving that way toward a sighted adult passenger, but in my case he saw no impropriety.

When the door opened, he restrained me with his hand and said,
"Wait. You can’t go yet." Since I was standing immediately next to the door
and since there was no traffic outside, it is hard to know why he felt I should wait.
Maybe he thought I should take a moment to get my bearings, or maybe it was simply more of
the protectiveness. Who knows?

He treated me very much as he would have treated a small child. How
should I have reacted? It all depends on how insistent and how obtrusive he was. There is
something to be said for restraint and not hurting other people’s feelings, but there
is also something to be said for recognizing when enough is enough.

In what I am about to say next, I am not just talking about persons who
are totally blind but also about those who now see so poorly that they cannot function the
way a sighted person normally does-persons who may be losing sight and who may be having
trouble accepting it. I am also speaking to relatives.

As I have indicated, most blind people appreciate help when it is
offered. When a blind person is walking through a crowd or down the street with somebody
else and trying to carry on a conversation, it is easier to take the other person’s
arm. This is true even if the blind person is quite capable of traveling alone.

All of us like to do things for ourselves, but there are times when
refusing to take an arm that is offered constitutes the very opposite of independence for
a blind person. If, for instance, a blind person is walking with a sighted person through
a crowded restaurant, the sensible thing to do is to take the sighted person’s arm
and go to the table without fuss or bother.

As you can tell, my views about independence and help from others have
changed over the years. Probably the single most important factor in helping me come to my
present notions has been the National Federation of the Blind. Having chapters in every
state and almost every community of any size, the Federation is the nation’s oldest
and largest organization of blind persons.

As it is with me, so it is with thousands of other blind people
throughout the country. We work together to help each other and ourselves. We give
assistance to parents of blind children, to blind college students, to the newly blind, to
the senior blind, and to blind persons who are trying to find employment. Above all, the
Federation teaches a new way of thought about blindness. We want to take the mystery out
of blindness. Mostly, we who are blind are very much like you.

This is the message of the National Federation of the Blind, and it has
made a great difference in my life. If I had to sum up my personal philosophy in a single
sentence, it would probably be this: Do all you can to help yourself before you call on
somebody else; try to make life better for those around you; and don’t throw nickels.

There you have excerpts from the two Kernel Books for 1997. I believe
our efforts at self-improvement and public education will be advanced by these books and
that we will go the rest of the way to full participation and first-class status in
society.

While I am talking about the future, let me say something else. I never
come into one of our convention sessions without feeling a lift of spirit and a surge of
joy, for I know to the depths of my being that our shared bond of love and trust will
never change, and that because of it we will be unswervable in our determination and
unstoppable in our progress.

Through our public service announcements on radio and television,
through newspaper articles and personal contacts, through gatherings like this, through
our mail programs, through our publications, through public speaking engagements, through
meetings with government officials and corporate leaders, and especially through our
Kernel Books, we are telling our story-and we are doing it in our own way and with our own
voice. The day after civil rights is fast approaching, and we will meet it as we have met
every other challenge we have ever faced-joyously, actively, and triumphantly. My brothers
and my sisters, we are truly changing what it means to be blind-and the Kernel Books are
helping us do it.

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