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The Swimmers and the Blind Man – Part 2 ~1974

WARNING: If you are offended by insensitivity and cruel attitudes from eras prior to the advent of Political Correctness, stop reading now. I’m sure none of the people involved in the following story would behave this way today – we’ve all gained maturity and wisdom (well, at least to some degree) – but back in 1974, we would sometimes behave like jerks. (Just like everybody else in the ‘70s.) Anyway, you’ve been warned.

What would you do if you had an unusable pool cue, a pair of sunglasses, and some paint that was left over from when you vandalized your high school? Of course — you’d pretend to be a blind man, right?

Well, OK, maybe that’s not what you would do, but it is what I did. Why? I dunno. I suppose you could get all Freudian about the symbolism of a guy who can’t get a date carrying around a 4-foot-long cane, or maybe attribute this behavior to a pitiable cry for attention by a geek who was not even noticed (“seen”) by the “cool” kids.

Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to do that Stevie Wonder head-wobbling thing in public. Who knows?

Anyway, I had this broken pool cue, and was determined to find a use for it. Being a former Boy Scout, of course I considered using it to create fire. It was good wood – ought to burn well – but…well, I could burn all sorts of other stuff. This was a very straight stick. It just seemed a shame to treat it like some gnarly old twig.

Whatever the motivation, I ended up sawing the broken part off the end of the cue, and then covering the whole thing with white paint. After it dried, I “borrowed” some of my sister’s red nail polish and created a glossy and alluring red tip for what I was now thinking of as my “cane”. I knew that I could go to the library and perform some research on the proper length of the red section; but I also knew that being nabbed by the “cane painting police” was far less likely than having my disguise penetrated because of the fact that I could, well, see. So I just slopped on the nail polish until I thought it looked good. “Looks good,” I said to myself, and laid it aside to dry.

The Wichita Swim Club was taking a bus trip to a swim meet in Omaha that weekend. I took my new cane along with no particular agenda in mind, other than to show the guys what I’d done with the damaged pool cue. But when you put a bunch of scheming deviant swimmers on a bus with nothing to do for hours, well, ideas get bounced around. At some point, the ideas congeal into a full-blown plot. My fellow conspirators and I would use the cane to see how badly we could dupe the local Omahanians. (Omaha-ians? Omygoshicans? What do you call them? Cornhuskers? I don’t think I even want to know what that means…)

Every time the bus stopped, I’d put on the sunglasses, grab the cane, and proceed to wander around the bus stop bumping into things. With one of the other kids acting as my well-intentioned but incompetent “guide”, I’d be led into knocking over store displays, entering women’s restrooms, and tumbling down flights of stairs.

I found it amazing that I could walk up to a stranger, whack them in the ankle with a pool cue, and they would apologize. And to this particular group of immature Kansas teenagers, such cruelty seemed to represent the pinnacle of humor.

That evening, the team went to the local buffet steakhouse for dinner. This presented a bit of a challenge for me for two reasons: One, it’s hard to carry a buffet tray while holding your guide’s elbow in one hand and a cane in the other. And, two, when you wear sunglasses at night, well… it’s really dark.

In other words, I was starting to understand how really crappy it would be to actually be blind.

Still, I had an audience with rather high expectations. And since the entire team was watching my every move, well, the show must go on.

I ended up tucking the cane under an armpit, and following Bruce VanBebber through the food line.

The hair-netted buffet attendant was happy to read the entire menu to me, describing each dish in detail. He didn’t know it, of course, but I could see the agony on his face as he tried to find words to make the rubbery-looking macaroni sound delicious and the brick-like carrot cake sound edible. He got stuck for a moment when he said “THIS is a large drink, and THIS is a medium,” before he realized that a sightless person would have no clue which cup he was indicating. I gave him the raised Spock eyebrow, and he changed his description. “Uh,” he said, “the large cup is pretty big and the medium cup is, uh, medium.” I nodded my understanding, and ordered a large Dr. Pepper.

(Side thought: is the "arched eyebrow" an instinctive expression of incredulity, or is it a learned behavior that would only be exhibited by sighted Star Trek fans? I’ll have to do some research.)

Once my tray was loaded, I held VanBebber’s upper arm and let him guide me to a table. He wasn’t paying much attention to the route we took, so I hoped that no spectators noticed that I neatly stepped around a couple of floor-level obstacles that I wasn’t supposed to be able to see. But then he led me into a situation where I needed to make a quick decision; either smack my tray into the back of Vickie Ingham’s head, or swerve to avoid her and reveal my deception.

I hope it didn’t hurt her too badly.

She did end up with a little bit of chocolate pudding in her hair, but she was an amazingly good sport about it. I managed to get seated without further incident.

I actually closed my eyes to eat, and found that it was possible to feed myself without looking at my food. It does change the dining experience, though – you should try it sometime.

“Oh, no,” somebody groaned, and I instinctively looked up. Sure enough, here came trouble. A couple of swimmers from the Topeka team were moving toward our table. And if being from Topeka weren’t bad enough, the group included the dreaded Ian Simpson.

I didn’t know him personally, but Ian Simpson had a reputation. He was huge and muscular, an incredibly fast swimmer, and he had a habit of false-starting in every single race. He didn’t talk much with his competitors, and he usually won every event he swam. Therefore, we assumed that he was a cocky and conceited jerk.

He sat down right across the table from me. Apparently he not only knew my name, but he also knew that my cane was a pool cue and my sightlessness was a sham. “Hi, Terry,” he said. “Good to see you.”

Then, as if immediately realizing that a blind guy might be sensitive to the word “see”, he apologized. “Sorry. I meant it’s good to, uh, sit with you.” And it went downhill from there.

“How did you guys handle the starting blocks today?” he asked the group. “Every time I got up there, the sun was in my eyes.” Pause. “Oh, sorry Terry.”

“I need to find out what heat I’m in for the 100 fly. Can I look at the heat sheet? Sorry Terry.” “We put our sleeping bags and stuff right next to the concession stand; it’s a great camp site. Sorry Terry.” “I’m gonna get more shrimp; I love sea food. Sorry.” “I think my brother is on the ‘C’ relay. Oops, sorry.” “Who’s on the ‘A’ relay? I am…sorry.” (Took me a while to understand that one. I/eye, get it?)

And it went on and on. Before the meal was over, Ian had uttered every conceivable variant on the theme of insensitivity. And his audience ate it up. The guy we had thought was nothing more than a muscle-bound aquatic automaton turned out to be quite the entertainer. Several strong inter-team friendships were formed that night thanks to Ian’s unfortunate treatment of Terry the blind man. While we still hated the town of Topeka, we no longer detested their swimmers.

So you could say that by cruelly mocking the misfortunes of others, I was able to become a catalyst for positive human growth and interaction. Or not.

As for the converted pool cue, well, it got safely tucked away under the seats of the bus for the remainder of the trip. From then on I only wore sunglasses when it was too bright outside. As a team, we swam pretty well, and our newly formed friendships with our northern-Kansas counterparts enabled us to direct our animosity in the proper direction – toward the damn Nebraskans. It was a good trip.

For the next few months, I continued to use my blind man’s cane, but only as it was meant to be used…as an air guitar. The only other time it appeared in public was when I took it on a camping trip shortly after I moved to Colorado.

It burned real good.