  so, i'm sitting on the train quietly reading my horrible book (as i lay dying-- faulkner can kiss my ass, by the way) and listening to my headphones when a blind man walks onto the train.
and by "walks" i clearly mean, "rampages". he storms into the train flailing his stick at all and sundry, presumably to get his bearings...but, he was swinging that thing with such fury he almost hobbled me. he came to a stop right in front of me. as i was reading and couldn't hear anything, i didn't notice that he was blind. i just thought he was an asshole and i almost punched him in the face. when i looked up, it became obvious to me that he was blind and he definitely expected me to get my sight-having ass up out of my seat and relinquish it to him.
which i would have done b/c i'm sort of a nice person. but, the woman sitting next to me saw him first. obviously, to prove her extreme martyrdom, she gives me this exasperated look (like she can't believe i didn't get up since he's standing in front of me) and very deliberately vacates her seat.
excuse me, but my foot is broken. don't i deserve a seat if for no other reason than i got there first? jackass. so. the blind man sits. and proceeds to make a huge production out of it-- all shifting wildly and whipping around his backpack. yeah, i know he can't see. but, at this point, he's hit me with his cane enough times to know where i am. not to mention the fact that we're sitting next to each other. where else would i be? he goes on to pull out this huge ledger-style braille book. now, i don't know much (or anything, really) about braille, but i have to believe that you'd read braille in much the same way you would read anything else. this guy was running his hands over the pages with such rapidity i thought he was having an episode.
after every few pages he started rubbing his hands on his face-- up and down, back and forth, and then kissing his hands. my first instinct was that he was praying. so, i stole a glance in his direction so i could figure it out. because, by now, i'm invested. upon closer inspection, i realized that he's not praying at all. he's just totally fucking insane. after sitting next to him awhile, i didn't really notice the slight jostle i'd get every time he started in on his facial machinations.
but, i did start to think about what it would be like to be blind. so, i closed my eyes and tried to imagine what his experience would be like. then, i got really freaked out b/c i got really disoriented and thought that if i was blind, i would be falling all the time. and then i felt sad. it's no fun being blind. especially when dumb bitches like me refuse to give you a seat on the train and then get mad at you for being crazy.
and then make it their first entry in their blog. 
