Did you notice how he claims he can tell when your shoulder needs a massage, and where?
Am I a bad person if this made me thing of a scene in Dude, Where's My Car that didn't even involve anybody deaf?
1: his sense of confirmation bias is intact.
I don't want random strangers touching me in the grocery store no matter how much "metatactile knowledge" they claim to have. Unless they're super-hot.
As long as I can still sense my arsehole.
Besides the practical benefits of establishing tactile contact as much as possible, there is something more primal at stake. Sighted people take this for granted, and may not appreciate how important this is, but, every day when they go out, they receive acknowledgment of their existence in the form of smiles, waves, nods, and murmured greetings from others. Where is my share in this reassurance that I am here?This bit near the end stood out to me a lot because my first thought was how lonely it would feel to become deaf/blind.
I suspect this would be a disability that would be very difficult to adjust to if it happened later in life - possible, obviously, but with vastly more effort and time than either going deaf or blind on their own. I can't really imagine what it would be like - hearing and sight are so essential to (at least)my sense of position in space that losing both would be utterly disorienting. In my experience just a mostly dark room or clogged up ears are enough to alter my sense of space and position. Complete loss of both senses seems like it would result in a totally qualitatively different experienced world.
I know someone whose sibling is deaf and blind, and had cochlear implants from infancy. At around 8 years old the sibling was invited to the NASA camp for a special program for disabled kids, where both implants were fried by the electrostatic in some tunnel thing. They both had to be replaced. The multi week recovery period was pretty harrowing. So if you know any kids with implants going off to NASA camp, warn 'em! Seems like something the NASA people ought to have known about...
That sounds like maybe a rare set of circumstances.
Ummm special camp for disabled kids???? Nope, NASA massively fucked up.
For sure. I just mean that maybe the networks don't need to run PSAs for it. I know like two kids with implants and none that went to NASA camp. That's none at all, not none of the kids with implants.
If they get an invite is all I'm saying.
Sighted people take this for granted, and may not appreciate how important this is, but, every day when they go out, they receive acknowledgment of their existence in the form of smiles, waves, nods, and murmured greetings from others. Where is my share in this reassurance that I am here?
Well, that's depressed me and I'm not even blind.
I know someone whose sibling is deaf and blind, and had cochlear implants from infancy. At around 8 years old the sibling was invited to the NASA camp for a special program for disabled kids, where both implants were fried by the electrostatic in some tunnel thing. They both
Now, see, in a better world that sentence would finish "developed super powers".
12: you could move away from britain, you know.
It's that harder now that the empire is gone?
re: 12, you could move away from britain.
When I was in England, people would smile and wave and all that. Possibly in response to my then obvious fresh-from-the-farm aura or possibly because the north is more friendly than the parts of England with jobs.
17: GODDAMMIT.
my daughter said that a classmate who moved recently felt like narnia was 'so friendly compared to back home in belgium.' "what must belgium be like?" she wondered, horrified.
I think it's just London that's the problem, actually.
19: ISTR a joke about Belgium's only famous products being chocolate and child-abusers, "and they only make the sweets to get close to the kids".
re: 18
The north, and Scotland, are dramatically more friendly. Presumably Wales, too. People who've been in the SE for a long time [or were born there] are often in denial about that.
When a man is tired of London, he should give Morecambe a try.
And when he's tired of Morecambe he can try walking to Grange over Sands around the time the tide changes.