Friday 29 January 2010

THE DICTATORIAL DIETICIAN.


Though people lampoon the quality of school cafeteria food, my fellow inmates and I felt our complaints were entirely justified. This excerpt from Deliverance From Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School) shows that blind children have the same opinion of institutional fare as their sighted peers.

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My schoolmates and I were similar to sighted children when it came to institutional food. For the past few years, Jericho subjected us to the worst cooking I had ever eaten. The dietician, a grumpy, older, harsh-voiced blond woman named Mrs. Anderson, was responsible for everything we ate. I was one of many boys who begged her to give us instant breakfast cereals such as Honeycomb. "You mean like what the bees keep their honey in?" Mrs. Anderson asked when I spoke to her one morning. When I explained what I meant, she said, "That's not good for you. Porridge is much healthier." Mrs. Anderson also flatly refused to give us hamburgers, hot dogs, and other enjoyable fare. Her mind was set and that was that. Practically everybody hated that disagreeable dietician.

Before Mrs. Anderson became terminally ill, we received a tongue-lashing from her. After lunch one cloudy January day, all of the blind students were kept standing in a long line next to the Dining Hall door. For reasons never disclosed to us, the driver for that day's school excursion was late. Time hung heavily and, as children will, we became restless. The volume of our voices escalated as the higher the noise level rose, the louder we needed to speak. "It sure is noisy in here," I yelled to Geoffrey, who stood next to me. He agreed and I was about to make another comment when a loud adult voice interrupted me. "You children stop that disgusting din at once!" We all turned to hear and see Mrs. Anderson. She stood there, arms akimbo, looking extremely flushed. "I have never heard such a deplorable racket in all my life!" she spluttered, making inarticulate verbal ejaculations, as her outrage rose. "You children deserve to not have dessert this evening," she threatened. Everyone stood, waiting for Mrs. Anderson to finish her tirade, silently hoping she would forget her idea of holding back our desserts. True to her word, we went without our apples after supper.

Around that time, our dictatorial dietician was off work periodically and then she stayed away for a few weeks. One rainy February morning, the news swept the school. "Mrs. Anderson died!" a boy proclaimed with obvious glee. Others spread the joyous news until the whole school rang with it. Though I never learned how old this woman was, I heard she had stomach cancer and a large part of that organ had been removed. The surgery turned out to be unsuccessful in stopping the disease.

Not every resident of Jericho was pleased with our jubilation. "That's a terrible thing to say about somebody who's died," Sherry, one of the intermediate girls, scolded. "You shouldn't say such things about the dead. It's not nice." Everybody ignored her. We were too excited over being rid of that ill-tempered dietician to worry about the opinions of a sycophant such as her. Sherry appeared to us to habitually side with the adults and continually sought to please them. To this day, I despise those individuals who say whatever their superiors wish to hear instead of the truth.

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Deliverance from Jericho contains many more vignettes of what life was like in that government-run institution. These range from poignant experiences of homesickness to hilarious incidents of mischief. This 196-page paperback, containing 6 black and white photos, sells for $25.00 through the PayPal-equipped Inscribe writers group website. E-mail me for further information or if you don't have PayPal but still wish to place an order.

Friday 22 January 2010

The toilet paper caper.


I've personally experienced how certain members of the public treat disabled folk as either completely helpless charity cases or heroic "overcomers." This excerpt from my Deliverance From Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School) memoir is one of many that demonstrates how similar visually-impaired boys are to their sighted peers.

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One night as we lay in bed, waiting for the night nurse to turn off the blue-tinted central light, I noticed a lump on the ceiling. "Hey Charlie, what's that thing?" I pointed.

"It's toilet paper. Some kid threw it there a couple of years ago."

"How did he make it stick there?"

"He got it wet under the tap," Charlie sleepily mumbled as he rolled over on his side.

My mind raced with mischievous possibilities. I ran excitedly to the bathroom, grabbed a hand full of toilet paper, poured cold water on it until it packed satisfactorily in my hand, ran back to the bedroom, and hurled it upwards. To my amazement, it stuck fast. The others also caught the spirit of the moment. After we industriously wet and hurled toilet paper blobs, the ceiling was festooned with them. We settled into bed again, admiring our handiwork. I particularly enjoyed the way the blobs radiated long shadows towards the walls.

Mrs. Parker made her final round a few minutes later to see if everybody was in bed. "What's that," she barked, staring at the lumps on the ceiling. "Toilet paper," Charlie said sleepily, "Brucey threw it up there." Mrs. Parker switched the four main light fixtures on. I winced at the sudden blast of light.

"You take those down right now," she commanded.

As I began pulling off the sodden lumps, I noticed no one else was helping.

"How come those kids aren't taking any down?" I enquired.

"You were the one who started it. Stop being a complainer and do as you're told."

I obeyed but I left the original yellowed lump, from bygone years, where it was.

"Take that one down too," Mrs. Parker insisted.

"I didn't throw that one there."

"I don't care. You take that down right now."

I reluctantly pulled it off and tossed it in the now full garbage pail.

As we drifted off to sleep, I silently cursed our supervisor for blaming the whole affair on me. I knew I was guilty of starting the incident but having to pull off that old lump, besides those which the other boys threw, reinforced the unfairness of it all.

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Deliverance from Jericho contains many more vignettes of what life was like in that government-run institution. These range from poignant experiences of homesickness to hilarious incidents of mischief. This 196-page paperback, containing 6 black and white photos, sells for $25.00 through the PayPal-equipped Inscribe writers group website. E-mail me for further information or if you don't have PayPal and still wish to place an order.

Friday 15 January 2010

"Rules is rules.'

We've all experienced the aggravation of arbitrary rules. Somebody somewhere decided some things either could or couldn't be done and nobody knows what the reasons were. "We've always done it that way," is the answer most often given when questions arise. This is especially frustrating to children as they think in concrete, not abstract, terms. In my Deliverance From Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School) memoir, I wrote of those times when my ideas of common sense collided with the hidebound regulations of its administrators. Here is a brief excerpt from it.

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Jericho's rules appeared incredibly arbitrary to me. Mom ordered four inflatable toy whales from a special offer by a coffee company the previous autumn. Mom named my whale Max and wrote my name on his chin with an indelible marker. Then she packed him in my suitcase. When we went swimming one evening, I inflated Max in the changing room and headed for the water. Suddenly, Mrs. Parker bellowed, "Get that toy out of there! Toys aren't allowed in the pool."

"How come?"

"It's against regulations."

"Can't I just play with him a little?"

"Stop dawdling and do what I say."

I felt painfully disappointed. It seemed so unfair that the school's Styrofoam paddle boards were allowed in the water but my whale, specifically designed for use in a pool, was not. I shuffled into the changing room and reluctantly deflated Max. My beloved pool toy remained in the closet until my supervisor packed my suitcases the next summer.

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Deliverance from Jericho contains many more vignettes of what life was like in that government-run institution. These range from poignant experiences of homesickness to hilarious incidents of mischief. This 196-page paperback, containing 6 black and white photos, sells for $25.00 through the PayPal-equipped Inscribe writers group website. E-mail me for further information or if you don't have PayPal and still wish to place an order.

Friday 8 January 2010

Once upon a two-wheeler.


When I attended a boarding school in Vancouver, British Columbia, a supervisor taught us how to ride a bicycle. Like all boys, I had my share of accidents. From my Deliverance From Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School) memoir, this is how my first and worst one happened.
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Cycling became one of my methods to escape the hopelessness of my situation. The thrill of riding at top speed down the hill caused me to temporarily forget my woes. I had my first serious bike accident one January evening. After asking Mr. Thynne's permission, I took a bike out from the storage room. As I zoomed down the road from the dorm, I saw the headlights of a car coming towards me. As I swerved to the right, my foot caught on the curb, sending me flying. Fortunately, I landed on the grass, but I twisted my right ankle. The pain nearly overwhelmed me as I picked myself up and hobbled back to the dorm, leaning on the bicycle for support.

When Mr. Moiarty drove me to the emergency ward of the hospital, I inexplicably had a fit of the giggles. Everybody in the emergency room stared at me as I laughed uncontrollably. My foot appeared twisted but the X-ray showed that no bones were broken. After a few weeks, it was as if nothing happened to my ankle.
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Deliverance from Jericho contains many more vignettes of what life was like in that government-run institution. These range from poignant experiences of homesickness to hilarious incidents of mischief. This 196-page paperback, containing 6 black and white photos, sells for $25.00 through the PayPal-equipped Inscribe writers group website. E-mail me for further information or if you don't have PayPal and still wish to place an order.