Thanks to the holiday, I had a short week this week, without much to report. So instead, I figured I’d answer a couple questions I’ve gotten from readers.
One reader wanted to know whether, as a corollary to reduced vision, my other senses were enhanced. This is a pretty common idea – that blind people’s senses other than vision are extremely good as some kind of biological compensation mechanism.
The truth is…not really, but kind of. I think the idea of compensatory senses is probably a bit overblown. We aren’t all Daredevil, the comic book character who went a long way towards enshrining this idea but who certainly didn’t invent it. It’s not so much that our other senses are empirically better; rather, it is that we rely and focus on them more. In other words, it’s not that I hear things others don’t because my hearing is better; it’s more that I’m listening more.
So generally speaking, I would answer this question by saying that blind people can pull more information from their other senses than can sighted people, which is not to say that those senses are sharper or “better,” but simply that they are more developed.
But! Daredevil fans rejoice, for there is also the possibility that other senses in blind people actually are “better.” Now forgive me as I wander off into the domain of science, where I am but an infrequent and inexperienced traveler. There is a concept in brain science called ‘neuroplasticity.’ It means, as near as I understand, that brain cells are pretty ingenious and adaptive little buggers who can, especially early in development, actually reassign themselves based on need.
For example, if the brain has assigned certain cells for visual applications, but then realizes that there is a shortage of optical data, the brain can then reallocate those cells to another task – language, for instance. As I understand, massive-scale restructuring tends to be more prevalent in early development; but the brain can pull this trick throughout life. Neuroplasticity is in play anytime someone suffers a major injury and has to adapt, for instance.
I won’t go any further down this road, because I don’t frankly know what the hell I’m talking about; but based on my understanding, I do wonder if this means the brain can actually shift some processing power to other senses. Again, I’m not talking about the senses themselves – your brain can’t make your nose or ears more sensitive. But I do wonder if it can make you a little bit better at reading the instruments.
I’ve thought about this a lot in the context of my own hearing, particularly in relation to music. I’ve always had the ability to process music aurally at a fairly high level, whether that means learning music quickly by ear, or separating out the individual components of a recording, or hearing frequencies within a mix. I have no idea whether this is related to my low vision. I doubt it would be possible to say for sure. But it is certainly something I’m curious about.
…
Another reader asked a few weeks back about the mechanics of going into a business as a blind person. This was prompted by my description of walking into a coffee shop under sleep shades. I’ve done this a number of times, in a number of locations, since that initial visit to the coffee shop. How?
Honestly, by some combination of intuition and the forbearance of others. It is often possible upon entering a business to listen and hear where the action clusters. Sometimes there are dead giveaways like cash registers, but other times, you just have to listen for where you hear things going on – conversations between cashier and customer, chiefly. And then you basically have to pluck up your courage and sally forth, hoping that you’ll either hit your guess or learn something from missing it.
This assumes, of course, that you’ve found the entrance to the business at all, the accomplishment of which frequently requires a barely-structured grope along walls and the sides of buildings. If you’re lucky, a patron will enter or exit while you are listening; but if you’re not, there’s not much to do but feel around and look for clues (a doormat is a good sign; so, too, is a change in echo that might indicate the difference between a concrete wall and a glass door).
And, to draw it all out one step further, there’s the even larger issue of knowing which door you’re looking for. As I described in an earlier blog post, the Denver address system is rich in information and can tell you a lot about where to find whatever address you’re looking for. So you may know that a given location is on the west side of the street, about halfway down the block; but you still have no way of knowing whether you’re in the laundromat or the gun shop (this being Colorado) until you ask.
That’s part of where the forbearance of strangers comes in. Because there are times when you have to ask for help. And there are times when you accidentally cut someone in line, because you’re good enough to figure out roughly where the cash register is, but not able to tell just by listening where a line starts and ends. And there are numerous other times when having limited vision can be a social challenge around others, just in the course of going about your day. Which is not at all meant as a ‘woe is me’ story, but rather as a nod to the overall kindness of others, who are often overzealous in their desire to be solicitous, but who are nevertheless compassionate and accommodating in their own ways.
There are two themes touched on here – the imprecision of getting around without sight, and the role others play in this getting around – that I’d like to underline now, as I plan on returning to them in future weeks. I’ll certainly keep you all posted about the daily goings-on of my time at the Center, but after about the seventh casserole (good name for a horror story), I suspect your eyes will start to glaze over. So I hope to mix in a little more of the philosophical stuff going forward. We’ll see how it goes.
For now, it’s time to pack up and get ready to leave my sister and nephews and head back to Colorado. Talk to you soon…
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