That's Just Human
That’s Just Human, a podcast that explores all aspects of being human, living in a body, and dealing with life’s obstacles. We discuss people’s stories, learn practical tools for growth and healing that help you learn to step into your authentic self and aliveness.
That's Just Human
Episose: 27 - From Sighted to Unsighted w/ Mark Christian
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What happens when the primary way you navigate the world—your sight— simply dissolves on a Tuesday morning? In this episode, I sit down with Mark Christian, a minister and seeker who moved from the sighted world into the "very low vision" spectrum following a stroke on the optical nerve in 2016.
Mark doesn't just share a story of disability; he shares a masterclass in energetic adaptation. We explore the "Human" moments of the transition—from the frustration of hitting cars to the "secret" of using a white cane as a signal to the world rather than a tool for himself.
The heart of our conversation:
- The White Cane as a Signal: How Mark uses the cane as a way to inform the world around him, clearing the path for both his safety and the awareness of others.
- Finding Internal Balance: The physical and mental shifts required to maintain equilibrium when you can no longer see the horizon.
- The Power of Physical Connection: Why losing the ability to read body language makes a "slug on the shoulder" or a physical touch more valuable than a thousand words.
- Get Up or Give Up: Mark’s powerful "motto" for facing life’s obstacles and why he chooses to keep getting up every day.
Mark’s journey is a lived example of the choice we all face at least once in life: Do we get up, or do we give up? He reminds us that while "nobody gets out of here in perfect shape," we can always choose to find a new way to play the hand we’re dealt—even if we need high-visibility cards to see the suits.
Time Stamps:
0:00:08: Mark describes the definitive day he realized his vision loss and Introduction
00:02:24: He clarifies his "low vision" (legally blind) and dispels common misconceptions about blindness
00:03:47: Mark shares instances of using his cane to assert his presence 00:06:32: Mark reveals that his blindness developed gradually from strokes, preceded by years of self-punishment and an alcohol problem.
00:11:08: Mark details his stroke on the optical nerve as the cause of his blindness
00:15:59: He discusses the challenge of everything taking longer and the need for patience.
00:16:46: Mark recounts early challenges
00:20:23: Mark highlights the benefits of technology like the "seeing AI" app and voice-over features that make it easier to navigate the world.
00:23:48: Mark reveals that he initially resisted learning to use a white cane
00:32:31: He shares how his blindness forced him to improve his memory 00:35:51: Last wisdom and closing remarks
Link to Transcript of Show:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16e-ERwJJ_y9tq7Bi0qevcQYXwQP3Oe1_/view?usp=sharing
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Well, I identify my blind date as uh December twenty second, twenty sixteen. Uh that was the day that I went to work at that point in time. I was working at a place called Volunteers of America. I was a Social Security payee coordinator. Uh people who uh cannot handle their own money. We got their social security, we paid their rent, we paid their utilities, and gave them a small stipend weekly after they had the money. Which is very computer driven. And I went on December 22nd, turned on my computer, and I could not find the cursor, period. Could not find it at all. I had already blown up the screen to have more magnification. Uh so then I really knew I had a problem.
SPEAKER_00Hello and welcome to That's Just Human, a podcast that explores all aspects of being human, living in a human body, and exploring life's obstacles. I'm your host, Elisha Light Angel, and by day I'm a massage therapist, and just like you, I also happen to live inside of a human body and have human experiences. Today, my podcast is going to be slightly different than my normal format where I interview people on the computer. I have somebody in person, and I'm not 100% set up for two people, so we're sharing one microphone and just using my little webcam. You know, use what you got to make what you can. So today I would like to introduce to you one of my friends, Mark Christian, and we'll be diving into his story on having been a sighted person to now being an unsighted person and the obstacles that that has presented in life from that point until now. So please welcome my good friend Mark Christian. Thank you, Alicia. You're welcome. I'm really glad to have you and explore doing a podcast in a completely different format today.
SPEAKER_01I'm always the round pig in the square hole.
SPEAKER_00I I'm here for it. So you are currently blind.
SPEAKER_01Mostly blind.
SPEAKER_00And can you explain that first before we kind of get into the history on how that works out? Because I don't I think people have a misconception about what blindness is.
SPEAKER_01Uh I have severe vision loss, and actually the the historically people have called it being legally blind. Uh, but now they're in in the blind community they're referring to it as very low vision. And that's what I have. I have very low vision. Like if I turn to you, I can see that you have blonde hair, but I couldn't tell you the color of your eyes. I can see that you're wearing kind of a purple, I think, uh dress or pinkish dress or something like that, but I can't see the details of it. Uh I see nothing out of my left eye except a little bit of uh glare in the far corner. And my right eye, I've got about two-thirds of the field of view in the upper half. And they tell me statistically that my eyesight is generally 2600, although I've got one little pocket, if I look like right at that light, that I can see a little bit better. And that's they say that's about uh 23 2120. So I really don't see much. And so that's the nature of what my I don't see anything down, so uh when I'm walking, I I can't see what's at my feet at all. So that's why I use the blind cane mostly when I walk. Um and I I do use the blind cane a lot, the white cane with the red tip, but I am not totally blind. And some people just figure out that since I've got that cane that I'm totally blind and I'm not. That's a little secret I like to keep to myself sometimes. There have been sometimes uh I'll be going somewhere and someone has uh pulled into this the crosswalk waiting to turn, and I'm coming and they just sit there. And so being a little bit of a pain in the butt sometimes, some I have been known to walk into their car even though I knew it was there, because their car was somewhere where it shouldn't have been. Okay. So I just have my cane and I just walk right into them, even though I knew it was there to give them the point. I bet the next time they pull a foot too far into the intersection, they might think about it. So that's that's my little manipulation. So anyway, that's kind of the nature of what I can see.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. Yeah, I know I had misconceptions, and then I met you, and you've kind of explained that to me. And I've heard some other people that share their story on the internet, and um, there's a there's a whole range of what blindness can entail for a person. And I would imagine that there's other people that are you know partially sighted, like you are, where they can seem just a little bit, but not enough to fully function the way the rest of us do in the world, that also use a cane. Yeah, um I and I think that's a good form of letting people know.
SPEAKER_01Well, and actually, that's oftentimes that's what I'm using the cane for. It's not really to help me so much as to help the person who sees me understand that I have a special need. Um because particularly if it's somewhere that I've been many, many times, I really don't need the cane. I know what the trip hazards are there. Uh I know I know to watch for the curb, I know to watch for the threshold of the door, I know that there's going to be a rug when I step inside and make sure that uh I I don't catch my toe on it, that sort of thing. But uh the the cane is really useful if I'm going somewhere I haven't been before. But if it's somewhere, but I I will still use it sometimes just for help to help people who don't know me know that I'm having a challenge.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Neat. So let's go back and um talk about the incident that brought you from having sight to losing most of it.
SPEAKER_01Well, I identify my blind date as uh December 22nd, 2016. Uh that was the day that I went to work at that point in time. I was working at a place called Volunteers of America. I was a Social Security pay coordinator. Uh people who uh cannot handle their own money. We got their social security, we paid their rent, we paid their utilities, and gave them a small stipend weekly if they had the money, which is very computer-driven. And I went on December 22nd, turned on my computer, and I could not find the cursor, period. Could not find it at all. I had already blown up the screen to have more magnification. Uh, so then I really knew I had a problem. Now, in the years that pass, I have come to recognize that my blindness had started about a year earlier.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um I did I I I identified many times as that one date, but uh I realized that uh I was driving somewhere and I I had a just a really strange feel, like a mini quake, and my eyes felt funny, and I didn't think much about it, and then something else happened and uh had some visual issues, and uh anyway, so it turned out really looking at it, I realized that this was increasingly a problem over a course of about a year. And one of the other clues that should have been to me is I kept running into things with my car. I had no sense of where the uh left inch of my car were was, and uh I would I hit a lot of curbs, hit a couple of cars. Uh but being, you know, strong and macho and guy, you know, I'm not gonna give up driving until I realized I really did have a problem. So I it was December 22nd, and uh interestingly, on that panel, on that idea, uh it was about in April, a few months later, that I realized that my I'd known my driver's license was about to expire. Well, you've got to have an ID. I was I live about three two blocks from a uh tag agency, so I went and got a went and got in the line to get my ID. And they said, Do you want to renew your driver's license? I'm standing there with my white blind cane. And they're asking me if I want to renew my driver's license. And I said, No, I I don't I I tried to drive, and no, I'm not gonna do that anymore. So we'll still renew it until they well, because they declare you illegally blind, but then they never revoke your license. It's just the irony of it. But uh they were gonna give me a new driver's license uh just because I was standing there.
SPEAKER_00That is wild.
SPEAKER_01That's problematic, yeah.
SPEAKER_00That that is problematic. Yeah, I I don't think anyone that has too much vision impairment should be driving on the road.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, and I mean I did investigate what the limits are. Uh in in Oklahoma anyway, there's a statement, I don't remember what the stats are, but how much how much uh angle of vision you get, you have to give a certain amount of uh angle of vision uh to be able to maintain your driver's license and uh obviously certain uh acuity, which I know I couldn't pass, but uh I was just surprised that day. Uh but really the shift gears here a little bit. Um shortly after I lost my sight, I was getting a ride with a friend, and he said, Are you mad at God because you lost your sight? And I said, Why in the world will I mean mad at God that I lost my sight? And he said, Oh, I don't know. I said, Well, I figure unless I'm giving blessings to God for everything in the world that happens to me, I can't be upset when something negative happens to me. That's just part of the deal. That's just human, you know. And uh he didn't see that he also didn't understand that my notion of God was not one who uh jumps in and deals in the affairs of human beings. I don't I don't believe in that kind of uh God who inv is involved in the day-to-day life of people or even the world. I I tend more with the deists and the uh the clockmaker god kind of idea that everything was set in motion and it's our job to figure out how to live it. So but um really the the cause of my blindness was my own damn arrogance. Um in 2015 I um lost a ministry position where I was, largely because two years earlier I'd been drinking too much. I developed an alcoholic problem. Uh went to AA for about five years, and I learned what was pushing my buttons and how to control it, so I don't go to AA anymore, but I certainly am high on the project. Uh maybe that's not the right word. I I'm favorable on on AA and the 12 steps. I think they're very valuable, but uh I got what I needed from it stepped aside. But uh one of the things that I I recognized is that in that year from 2015 to 2016, I had been kind of even before that, I'd been punishing myself for being so stupid, for allowing my this to happen to me, to destroy my marriage and destroy my career. And I did stupid things like stop taking my blood pressure medicine. I had taken my blood pressure medicine shortly before that incident, and it was 220 over 180. Wow, that's right. Which that's stroke turn, right? I was lucky that the stroke, my stroke hit me in the eye. I I my my blindness is caused by a stroke on the optical nerve. Uh my eyes work, it's just that the nerve connection on this eye doesn't go anywhere. And um so I'm since back on my medications and I'm now running about 110 over 65, so my my blood pressure is great these days. But it was like I was a way of punishing myself. You know, you did a you screwed this stuff up, so now you just need really to pay for it, Mark. So that that's that that's the basic outline of uh what my my story is.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you had mentioned having a slight little pain in your eye somewhere in 2015, just this little jolt. Do you think that was a stroke?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. At first I thought I had one big stroke, but over time I recognized that I'd had five or six small ones uh which were caused by my lack of attention to myself. But I also, in and having you know years of looking back on that period just before, I had in the year before that, or the year and a half before that, I had had um three major falls in the home where I hit my head real hard. Uh one, it was icy, and I was taking the trash out, and our driveway had a little slip slope to it, and I went down and hit my head on the ground really hard there. And then uh we were uh getting ready to sell our house, and I was cleaning with a swimming pool, and I was down on the bottom trying to scrub the junk out of it, and it was slick, and I hit my head on the swimming pool. And then I was at my job as well, and I was trying to do something, and uh, well, this is how it all gets so complicated, uh, or such so human, as you might say. Uh that was the day that my divorce happened, and uh I had a picture of my ex-wife up on the credenza where I worked up above the computer station, and I couldn't reach up there. I'd gotten it up there, so I said, I know there's a way that I can get up there. I must have used a chair, which I did, but instead of using the chair I'd done before, I used my little office chair which was rolling and whatnot, and so I was trying to step on that and then fell back and hit my head. So I can see that in the year or so prior to this December 22nd event, three major times where I probably had a concussion and never never checked on it because I'm a guy, I'm a big guy, I'm I'm fine, I'm tough, I can shake it off. Uh that might have worked when I was 15 or 20, but uh at age uh 60 it wasn't so effective.
SPEAKER_00That makes sense. So did you can you kind of describe where your emotional state was battling with knowing that wow, I've really lost my sight now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, well, first of all, there was a part two of that was kind of a relief because I knew what I knew what it I knew what my situation was, you know. Um but uh emo emotionally once it happened, I really haven't had too much trouble. But actually lately I've been having a little challenge just to getting frustrated at the things that I can't do or have a difficulty with. But uh generally I I think it's just fine. I mean it's it things happen to everybody. And if everybody, you know, I don't I don't try to bring any more attention to my blindness than I have to, other than the occasional use of the cane or walking into a car. Uh but uh I just uh I just don't see that as as a big deal. You know, everybody has things, you know, we all have stuff, we all have problems, we all have setbacks, and I just take it as that, you know. Um one thing I did discover, and I did discover this early on, you know, within the a month or so after losing my sight, is I decided that I've got a choice. I've been knocked down. Do I get up or give up? And that's the question I ask myself all the time. Do I get up and do it again, get up and go after it again, or do I give up? And most of the time I decide to get up and go. There's a few days that I go, I just can't take this anymore. And I said lately I've been having a little more struggle with my uh lack of vision as I'm maturing into it. I've got nine years of it now, uh, since I lost my sight coming up in uh December. Um but no, it's just part of the deal. You know, we no nobody's promised to get out of here um in perfect shape. Maybe if you do, but uh I'm not gonna get out of here in perfect shape.
SPEAKER_00So very true. So what have been some of the challenges that you faced in having to adjust, like I guess, everything that you do in life?
SPEAKER_01Different, yeah. One of those realities I had to accept, and that was hard for me because I had very poor patience problems, you know. Wasn't patient at all. Everything takes me longer. Everything. For example, you came over to pick me up at my house to come over here to record this, and it probably took me two minutes to get into the car with your help. Everything takes me longer, and uh having to accept that everything is just gonna take me longer, and I can either worry about it or I can just accept that it'll happen when it happens. And that's uh one of those first things. Uh uh I I I I ran into a number of challenges. Uh shortly after losing my sight. I was living in a uh 24-story apartment building in downtown Oklahoma City, which was fine. I liked that really well. Uh, but I had to go to the grocery store, and so I would take the bus to the grocery store uh because I don't drive, you know. And uh but I I had you know sacks that I would take with me. And I the first time or two I uh tried to get by in the store by myself, realized I couldn't do it. And then I started going up to the office and asking for them to have someone shop with me. And they kind of looked at me one time and said, Well, we don't really do that. I said, Look at it this way. You can either spend 15 minutes helping me shop or an hour and a half cleaning up after me when I knock every every end cap in the darn store because I can't see them, and when I rearrange everything trying to figure out which was the uh nacho cheese Doritos and which was the cool ranch. So you can either help me for 15 minutes or clean up the store for an hour and a half after I've gone, you decide. Uh but no shopping was a challenge. I I now use one of those that deliver my groceries, and so I can use my phone through my voiceover in my phone and uh have it talked to me, and I can order my groceries and have them delivered to the house. Sometimes I get a little surprise. Sometimes what I think was gonna be a uh, for example, I got some bacon bits. And I thought it was the little, I'm sorry, the little package like that. Well, it turns out it was like a one-pound package of bacon bits. Big, big old thing. Uh so sometimes I get surprised like that, but uh then I don't quite get what I think I'm ordering. But that's part for the course, you know. Everybody in life discovers they don't always get what they're ordering.
SPEAKER_00That is true. There's at least once, if not multiple times, yeah, yeah. Stores, fast food restaurants, regular restaurants.
SPEAKER_01You call this a Rubin? Yeah. Uh I will tell you one success that I'm having here, and this is this is really the most exciting place of my life right now, is that uh I've started picking playing bridge again. I played bridge starting at age 18 and uh played, I quit playing bridge a lot until computers came along, and then I started playing bridge online a lot. But when I lost my sight, I could no longer do that. And I found a group here in in Stillwater who practically who does uh it's called Duplicate Bridge. And it's a it's a competition form of bridge where you're actually playing other partnerships and you score each other on the same hands so you can actually compare. Uh and but this group has by the time I came in it, there are now three of us who have visual difficulties. So they'd already run through some of this. For example, the at the tables they've got an extra light they can put next to me, so I've got a chance of seeing what my hand is. And uh but they also have duplicates, you you put the cards into a board so that the hands stay consistent. Now it's challenging for me to take those cards and order clubs, diamonds, hard spades, numerically and things like that. So what the group has done is that before they move on, they sort the cards into the order. So when all of us pull out our cards, they're already sorted and separated, which is an enormous help to me and to them because I could do that myself, but it would take me another three to four minutes to get my hands sick. And it'd just uh be just too much when you play 25 hands and take three extra minutes per hand. That's a lot of time.
SPEAKER_00Do they make textured cards?
SPEAKER_01Not that I know of. Uh, I did get a set of cards that are that are designed high visibility. Um what they do on that one, as well as having big numbers and letters, is they've added two different colors. Spades are still black and hearts are still red, but diamonds are green and clubs are blue.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01So that you've got different colors, or maybe clubs are 11, yellow, I don't remember which. But so there are things to do. This is a great time to be blind. You know, uh I my phone has got all kinds of practical applications. Uh one I really like is called uh uh seeing AI.
SPEAKER_00What does that do?
SPEAKER_01Well, I I point my my phone at something and it tells me what I'm looking at. Oh. It can read to me uh uh a label, it can read to me something. It's it's kind of tedious to use, but it works. Um plus my phone has voiceover, so it it will tell me what I need to know instead of me reading it and voice to text. Um I have joked many, and there's other ones in there that are very good, uh very helpful. Uh if you have a hearing vision loss and you're having challenges, there's a lot of technology out there that's that's free. Uh these don't even card cost you anything to get. Um so that that that's an important step there.
SPEAKER_00Uh so are these all apps you've had to download on your phone?
SPEAKER_01Uh well the the basic iPhone operates with the voiceover is in there and the and the text message is in there already. Uh so that's the that's built into the iPhone. Uh there are a couple of them that I had to download, you know. Tap tap C is one, uh I said seeing AI. I've got several. One of the things that I've come to observe is that there's uh never been a better time in the world to be blind. But then again, there's never been a better time in the world to have cancer. There's never been a better time in the world to be whatever it is that you've got, to have your leg broken. This summer I fell and broke my arm and snapped it right here. They cut me open all the way down my arm, but I didn't. Have to have a cast. Because I'd laid there, this was July, I was laying there on the concrete hot, going, Oh my god, I'm gonna have a cast from my wrist to my shoulder for 10 weeks. Oh, what a way to spend the summer. But they didn't put a cast on at all, they just opened me up and did it. So there'd never been a better time to have all kinds of things. But there's never been a better time to be blind. And I think my my stepfather has profound hearing loss. And I think I am far less isolated than he is. I think hearing loss is far more isolating than vision lost. Um just simply because he can see what's happening in one direction, and I can't that. But I can hear what's happening in all directions, and he can't hear that at all. So there's all kinds of disabilities, like I said, nobody gets out of here alive. Um I when I started, when I first lost my sight, I I got on on board. Actually, the social workers told me that I was much faster at uh coming to this conclusion than than most people are because within a month of losing my sight, I was already in contact with the Oklahoma Department of Reability of Services, the visual loss department. And uh most people wait six months or a year before they call us and realize I recognize that uh I'm living alone, I gotta have some help. And uh I've got a big walking cane that I worked used for many years, hiking cane, big wood, broad, about um four and a half, five foot tall, something like that. And that's what I was using uh to get around because I knew I needed to know where I was and have something because the other thing I'd say is that uh the only thing worse than my equilibrium is my depth perception. Oh yeah. So equilibrium was a problem with me too. So I was using that to support myself, and I'd gone to they they had a uh course at the rehab services here uh on blind education. I said, Hell, I thought I taught myself to be blind all by myself, you know. No, I had to go to school for it. Uh no, but uh, as I was there using that, she said, Well, why don't you use a blind cane? I said, Well, I've never had one. And she said, I don't think I really want to do that. Uh yeah, I don't want everybody to know. And she looked at me, this is another person who has vision loss. So, you know, said I I still will talk about looking and seeing and things like that. She said, You're the only one who doesn't know that you're blind. When you run around with that, everybody can tell you're blind. Just by the way, you have to look at people, you're not looking at except well, if the camera's there, if I that's that shouldn't be about straight on looking at the camera, but I can't see it at all. So I I've got to turn it, you know, 30 or 40 degrees to be able to see. So when they realize that you're running around with your head cocked all the time, uh, and that you don't really see details. So she said, Yeah, the only person you're fooling with that cane is you. Yeah, so I did that.
SPEAKER_00So is that a pride thing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh pride, necessity, uh male arrogance, you know. Don't want to show vulnerability. And I am concerned about it sometimes because I realize that running around with a blind cane does put a mark on me. Someone knows they can pretty easy to take me, take advantage of me. So I've thought about all the ways I could use my cane to cane quando, you know.
SPEAKER_00Uh uh Have you had an experience where someone's trying to? Oh, well, that's great.
SPEAKER_01No, no, but it's a fear that goes through your head.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Much like, you know, uh any um any woman who goes through a dark parking lot or gonna be tensed up and be ready, you know, and think about what their options were. And that's kind of what I did. Yeah, but uh anyway, it's the reality of it. But yeah, the only person I was fooling with that big walking stick was me.
SPEAKER_00Um, so was your equilibrium in conjunction with losing some of your sight like due to the stroke?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, just due to the loss of sight, you know, you uh I can't see the horizon. So, you know, what is up is just what feels up, and sometimes I'm off. Um and plus if I stand up quickly, you know, I I I tend to I tend to go in little circles until I balance myself out. Uh so yeah, but it it was tied to the same thing.
SPEAKER_00And as you've progressed with having this and getting older, has the equilibrium balance or unbalance increased? And just because I've heard that as we get older naturally, yeah, that we start to lose some of that balance.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm sure it has. Uh I'm I'm this happened. I I lost my my vision when I was 58, and I'm now 68. I'm sure just that 10 years passage would have a piece of that. Uh but um I don't really think it's gotten my my vision is getting worse. I have I can look back at what I could see when I first lost my vision and remember that and what I see now, and they're not the same. So my vision is declining. Uh, but they tell me there's nothing to be done for me. There's no surgery, uh, there's no meds that I can take that'll improve my vision. Until they're ready to be able to transplant optical nerves, there's nothing that can be done for me. And uh there may be some work out there, but nothing that I've heard of, and none of the people that my social workers have heard about. Um that's the anecdote along the way here. Um this last May I went to a conference uh uh blind people. It was called uh the um anyway, it was uh a people, uh a conference of blind people from uh Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and and uh tech and uh Arkansas. And I did discover the old saying that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. It's true. Because I am the one-eyed man, and there were a bunch of the people that I was interacting with who were totally blind, and we would go places and I would I would help direct them. You know, I oh wow, I can tell you where we're going. We're we're going another 30 feet down the hall, and then we're gonna turn left. So I did discover that that adage is true. Then uh in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
SPEAKER_00So interesting. What was it like being in a conference with a bunch of other people with the same disability?
SPEAKER_01It was really affirming. Um, you know, being around people who some of them have dealt with their vision since since birth. Some of them have lost theirs far more recently than mine, different people on different perspectives, different amount of loss. Uh people with dogs, people with canes, people who rely on a person taking them by the elbow to go anywhere. Uh it was just very humbling, and very, very uh notion of a community there. And there there's a group of blind people who I know who they get together every Monday night and they play games on the computer. Oh, how fun. They have they have a game night. I have never sat in on it, but I know it's there. But um uh so there's a lot of things going on. I I I really want to try and find uh a beep baseball game where the ball beeps and you try to swing at it. Oh that's out there. Yeah, I'd love to do that, you know. Um uh but i there's not enough blind people in Stillwater uh to do that. So uh I'm sure there's somebody else in Stillwater running around here using a blind game, but so far I'm the only one that I've seen anyway.
SPEAKER_00Well, they do have the talking crosswalks here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, they have some.
SPEAKER_00Well, I've never actually experienced the talking crosswalk until I moved here, and I lived in a big metroplex, the FW, and they just weren't there. They weren't there. And so the first time I'm hearing it, do not cross. It sounds like it's being really rude to you because it keeps repeating over and over.
SPEAKER_01Ten, nine, yes, eight, yeah. Uh I lived in downtown Oklahoma City and and they were there. But I I haven't found one here in Stillwater, so I want to know where that one is. I can go find it. Appreciate it. Uh but yeah, that those those are very helpful. Uh, but it's still a matter of risk, you know. Just because it tells me to walk doesn't mean it's safe to walk. That's like just because that light turns green, do you think it's safe to enter the intersection? Not always. Yeah, you you better check before even though you know you've got the green light. If you don't want to get hit, you better check because somebody may not be looking. Uh so it's it's and I've had a couple of uh incidents with cars. Um I had one that I'd gotten at at my apartment, and there was somebody who'd backed into it, who'd gone into a place, pulled into it, where it was set for no parking. And I was walking behind his vehicle and I and he backed up. And I mean I I landed on the on the end of the vehicle and just pounded it. Uh, because I was afraid I was gonna fall down and then he'd back over me. Um and um I've had a time or two, one walking in a 7-Eleven parking lot. Parking lots are awful. There is no way to get from the street to the store without crossing traffic. And as you may well know, people in convenience store parking lots often aren't paying much attention. And I had a time when a guy was backing right onto me into me, and I slapped his car because he was in it. He said, What are you hitting my car for? I said, Because you were about to hit me. You know, you can't hit my car. I said, Well, you go ahead and hit me and see what happens to you. Because I actually have special rights with my blind cane. You get penalized more for hitting me, or is that as the joke used, you get more points for hitting me. No, there it's a stiffer penalty if you if you hit a blind person who's using a cane. It's a it's an extra level of fine.
SPEAKER_00Which doesn't help me necessarily, but is there any kind of message you could leave for the listeners that maybe something that you wish people could be more mindful of in paying attention to people that have a visual disability?
SPEAKER_01Parking lead hygiene, you know, parking correctly, getting your putting your carts up instead of leaving them out in the middle. Another one that I had to learn is chair hygiene. It's really difficult for me when people sit in a chair and pull it out and then don't push it back in again. Uh it's really easy for me to to run into that. Uh those are the things that most specific are just to recognize someone's struggling and to give them more time. To not get, you know, because the person can't jump the second that you see it happening, uh, to be a little more patient, to understand that you never really know what's going on inside a person. And so to be be kind and be appropriate and in dealing with human beings generally, that's the best way to be so human. Just that's just human.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I guess the other thing I would note is uh we know each other because I I'm a minister, as I noted earlier. And uh it was I learned to preach without a manuscript. I spent twenty-five years preaching from a manuscript. And now, as you know, I don't I can't read any notes, I can't read a manuscript, so I just have to get my ideas oriented in my head and get up and tell fourth. And so it's uh it's been an interesting experience for me to learn to do that. And I really appreciative of it because I I think that it's a a better way for me to communicate than when I was writing a manuscript. It's more in the moment, it's more direct, it's more human. Uh anyway, that's just the other thing I would kind of note there.
SPEAKER_00Have you had to enhance your memory capabilities to hold this information? Because when you do, you quote, yeah, you have different quotes, you have different things that you're repeating that one would have to memorize.
SPEAKER_01Well, uh and a lot of that is uh the uh like someone will ask me how long would it take you to write a sermon? And I would say anywhere between 20 minutes and 68 years. You know, you you pull out of your whole life experience. Uh and a lot of these quotes are ones that I've known for many years, and uh or I run into something, or or I like I I was thinking today about your your podcast, and I said, Now who was it who said the quote, uh, I am a human, therefore nothing human is alien to me. And it was the Roman playwright Terence. Terence. So his comment was, I am human, therefore nothing in the human experience is alien to me. And uh to find things like that, Miller memorize it to drop on you in this uh situation. Uh so but I I I've had to learn to do it differently because I I now, when I preach, kind of understand myself as having stepping stones. I know where I am, and I kind of know where I want to go. And this is going to be the stepping stone I'm gonna use to talk about this, and there's a stepping stone over here, and then I'm gonna jump over to this one, and I might have to come back a step and then jump two forward. Uh so I've kind of visualized what I do as having uh stepping stones across a pond or a stream or a creek or something like that.
SPEAKER_00Cool. So is there anything else in your story or the last nine years that you would like to touch on that I haven't asked a question about?
SPEAKER_01One of the things that uh I have noticed is because I have no ability to read body language. I just can't see people's bodies well enough. And you may think that uh most of communication is verbal, uh, but I could tell you that it's not. A great deal of it is non-verbal, and I have difficulty time with that. So there have been times when uh I've been angering someone, and I don't know it because they're showing the normal signs of crossing their arms. I can't tell what's going on. Uh so I tell I was in a group with one person, and I could tell I could tell that I was driving her crazy. And I said, you know, if I'm driving you crazy, just come over and slug me in the shoulder and I'll stop. And she did. And I said, Did that feel better? She said, Yeah, I said, good. No, I just understand that everybody's got their challenges. Uh, we all have our challenges. Some of them can be seen, some of them can't be seen, but they're all real nonetheless.
SPEAKER_00That is very true.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01I'm delighted to be here.
SPEAKER_00Well, I have one more question for you. I would like you to give a gift of wisdom from your life. It could be anything dealing with this, anything earlier in your life, just a bit of wisdom that you want to leave the listeners with.
SPEAKER_01I think I would go back to that statement that came to me right after losing my sight. I've been knocked down, I have a choice. Get up or give up. And as long as you keep getting up, you don't give up. That's that's been my motto. And really it was. I learned that from my mother. You know, she was a single mom raising kids, she'd been hit hard, and she just had to get up every day to keep things going. You don't get the chance to not get up. So get up or get up or give up. That's that's the whole point. I like it. Get up or give up.
SPEAKER_00Good advice.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Well, I really appreciate you coming over and um even giving me a little challenge today and doing a podcast in a different format and way that I have normally been doing it.
SPEAKER_01Change is good, they say.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, you know, I I get into my little systems and I have the system and it's down and I know what I'm doing. So this is kind of it's still in the system, but a little outside of the system.
SPEAKER_01I've always been a round peg in a square hole.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Well, thank you so much to my listeners. As you embrace your humanness, be kind, be you, and remember, everything is part of the journey.