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Three Hundred and Fifty-Two:   A Blind Girl in the Suburbs:  A Christmas Tale

We must start at the beginning as many of you should know by now the pained story of how little Jess lost her sight, but when it first happened, the first big time anyway, she lost her driver’s license too.  This won’t seem too big of a deal to anyone who is not old enough to yet drive a vehicle or has had their license for years, but for a young, twenty-something woman not having your driver’s license means immobility and dependence, two things that scared her most. 

Now, at this point in the current story she has fast forwarded four years after her alleged vision loss to a frosty morning before Christmas as she dressed preparing for a long Christmas shop to find all of the last additions to gifts to go under the tree, when her mother calls up asking when she needs to be at the mall to meet her friend, and then it hits young Jess right in the face:  If I bring a gift home for mum she will see it in the car!  There is no way I can shop for everyone today someone is bound to see their gifts!  How frustrating it is to not be able to take a bus because the subdivision I  now live in doesn’t have access and cannot drive a car of my own!  Woe is me!

What a sad thought, is that not frightening?  Imagine the horror of not being able to go anywhere around the holidays on your own and always relying on someone else to drive you there.  You probably remember this from your early teens before your driver’s license arrived, but at least then you might have had the public transit system to rely on.  There were busses running out of this suburb but they were across a large scary road and the rest took a long, long time, ages even, to get to the mall.

So what is a broke blind student to do?  Things must be bought, and even if it wasn’t shopping it would be something else like going to a Christmas dinner or meeting friends for tea,  there always seems to be some obstacle between young Jess and independently living life.  Is the moral of this story allow people to help you if you need it?  It is something young Jess has had to become accustomed to, but that is not all.

Don’t take that driver’s license, vehicle, bus route, borrowed car, mother father guardian for granted that gets you around and you can live life without complaint.  And as for young Jess, she will be departing for the mall on her loving request to her mother, as she is lucky her Mum asks when she needs a ride and doesn’tjust say her own schedule.  How lucky is that?

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