Blind leading the Blind

There's a Center for the Blind not too far from my office so I always see random blind people (that sounds terrible, "see random blind people") with their tappin sticks.  This one guy today was tappin seriously hard. I could hear him from almost a block away.  He was really giving the sidewalk a good whack.  So I got to thinkin, as I always do.  Those sticks are designed so the blind person can feel their way around objects that are directly in front of them.  What if they made those sticks for people who were near sighted (people that cant see things which are far away.)  So the stick would just be extra extra long so they could "see" objects that are really far away. People could whack stuff half a block away. Could be pretty awesome.
I just thought this picture was funny considering the topic.

Blind leading the blind?

The guy that sits next to me at work plays trumpet in a band. It's not like a band like Chicago or anything, but he plays in a big concert band playing stuff like Sousa marches and patriotic songs. Anyway, he was telling me that his band just got some new members, an older husband and wife duo. He said they are both really great players and that the wife who also plays the trumpet happens to be blind. So when they get new songs to play, she can't read the sheet music, but if she hears the song once or twice, she can figure out the notes and play the song back from memory. Pretty cool. So anyway, I guess he is in charge of distributing the sheet music, so he sends the woman the mp3. In his email he says whatever he needs to say and then asks me if it's wrong to close with "see you tomorrow". He decided not to go that route, but I thought it was probably fine, but still not worth making that oversight. Wow, that was a really bad unintentional pun. Anyway, he closed with "I hope this helps". She responded back with "Thanks Dave, See you tomorrow." Amazing.

The movies

I recently went to a job site to check on the progress of a movie theater renovation I was working on. The project looked great but the building inspector had a few issues with updating the theater to be more handicapped accessible. Minor things like making one of the bathrooms have levers on the doors instead of knobs, and adding grab bars to some of the bathroom stalls. No big deal. Another issue though was adding braille signs for the bathrooms. No big deal either, but seriously, are blind people really going to the movies? Then I thought about that new movie, "The Blind Side". Irony? Imagine a fire in the theater and everyone running out hysterically and the poor blind person is feeling their way around using the walls when they come across what they think is the exit. They feel around for the braille sign.... nope, women's restroom. Damn it!