Free Cockeyed by Ryan Knighton Page B

next evolutionary stage, if I could make it.
    The problem was this. Only after accidents or near-accidents would I think, shit, you know, I really should take that thing out of my crud bag. Maybe I’d think that after bouncing my nose off a vending machine or sitting on the lap of what I took to be an empty chair. After moments like these, I’d flirt with the idea of my cane or haul the actual stick out for a little while. But when I grew safe and confident again, back into my bag it went. I treated my mobility aid like I treated my blindness: both were occasional. Keeping them camouflaged was a temptation I couldn’t resist, as long as I wasn’t being outed by an accident. To really commit to the cane, something more had to give. Because I didn’t always need it, I had to go one step beyond. I had to want it.
    Wanting to cane is a challenge, counterintuitive as it may
sound. I may not need a cane at every waking moment, but that doesn’t mean I can put it down until I say, hey, here comes another pesky phone booth, better get out the trusty old stick. Although we may be blind all the time, that doesn’t mean we’re always uncertain about what is around us. To keep my cane in hand I had to learn to enjoy its certainty and potential, even when neither seemed necessary. That’s a difficult lesson.
    Put it this way. If nobody’s around, and everything is safe, how does somebody enjoy a stick? Even more difficult, how is a stick enjoyed when everybody else is watching? I think of that poor Star Wars Kid on the Internet. One day, at school, he videotaped himself playing Jedi knight. Bad idea. He made the sound effects with his lips, swung a broom handle like a light saber, and danced and battled as only a Jedi can. Then somebody outed him. Some doofus classmate came along, found the tape and, having eaten too much paste in elementary school, proceeded to upload the footage to the web. The cult following that ensued, and its mockery of the Star Wars Kid, are global.
    I think I can identify, even though the scale is different. I mean, if this poor kid was the Death Star of embarrassing situations, proportionately speaking, I was the freight elevator on Level 12. I, too, felt for weeks that whenever I swung my own stick, everybody in the world caught a glimpse of me. I was playing Blind Man for the crowd. Hey, look at me! I’m acting like a guy who needs a stick. Even I don’t think I need one right now, so I’ll casually swing it around until it seems useful again. In effect, I’d grown so accustomed to the secrecy, the privacy, of my condition, that I wasn’t prepared to be seen yet.

    Denying my blindness wasn’t my own job, either. Not anymore. Many faces joined in on the work. Within my shrinking tunnel vision, I glimpsed people’s expressions of confusion, derision, suspicion, and surprise as I tapped past. In these faces I found too much accusation. I didn’t look blind to them or blind enough, not all the time, and I still don’t on occasion. What could I do, though? Stop and describe my pathology after every sidelong look? For the first few weeks, the shame was powerful enough to keep my cane in my backpack.
    Eventually I nursed a small shift in perspective. Somehow I stopped looking at myself just long enough to discover the terrific and strange power I had over others. With a cane I could conjure dynamics just too wicked to put down. The awkwardness I caused some sighted people made the cane easier to hang on to while I grew accustomed to its use. I caused chaos. That was my methadone, my Nicorette gum, and my crutch. It was the cane for my cane. Here’s an example.
    Typical reactions to a white cane separate sighted people into several distinct groups. The most common behaviour is exhibited by a group I’ll call the Stumps. They are people who, despite a wide walkway, be it a parking lot or mall or even a Canadian prairie, see a blind