Tumbledown

Tumbledown

         I never knew anything about wisdom until my first fight. I lost the fight, but to me fights aren't about landing hits; they're about learning how to take punches. Anyone can throw a knock-out blow, but only great fighters can withstand them and go on to win.

         As a teen I went hiking a lot. Mostly along Tumbledown Ridge in Maine. Sounds treacherous, but it was barely a hill, compared to a real mountain. Mountain-climbers would make fun, but to me the hike was a challenge. Great exercise, beautiful scenery, and all the privacy a growing boy could ask for on weekends.
         Often my best friend Jimmy would go with me. We would take backpacks with pepperoni sausages and bags of walnuts and sticks of cheese to eat along the way. Two canteens each of water (Mom insisted) and Jimmy's dad's cell phone and all the boy talk we could manage during our travels. We would crack nuts, toss the shells, and talk about girls. We left a trail of nutshells like bread crumbs for anyone to follow.
         I would ask him about cars and the latest movie his dad was working on. Jimmy would ask me silly what-if questions like whether I'd rather be blind or deaf. He plays drums, so of course he'd rather hear. I always said I'd rather be able to see.

         I was 16 before I had my first date. Carrie was only a month younger but a whole school grade behind me. She was also taller than me, which unnerved me, but she was obviously interested and that alone encouraged me enough to finally ask her out. You might think a movie is a terrible choice for a first date, since you don't get to talk. For me, though, that was a good thing. I didn't know what to say. All I really remember is that we held hands walking out of the theater. Her dad picked us up and that was that.
         We never went out again, mostly because I was a dweeb who didn't know north from south. I assumed that if she had a good time, she would ask me out for the second occasion. She never did, and I felt like a boring fool. But better to be a fool through naivete, than a fool through belief. We are expected to blunder when young and uneducated. It is when we are older and supposedly mature that the really harmful foolishness appears.

         My parents fought all the time. I thought they might get a divorce, but they never did. Somehow all that fiery anger burned itself out quickly and was forgotten until the next time. They'd yell at each other over stupid stuff, like whether to scrub the dishes right away or let them soak first. If there was no chore to debate, they could always argue about my visions.
         Ever since I was ten, I saw things. Mostly I saw them when I was alone, but sometimes at school. I would see invisible worms swimming through the air, or fireworks above buildings. No one else could see them, except on the 4th of July of course. Dad always thought I was making it up to get attention, and Mom kept insisting that I go to the doctor.
         When I was 15, Dad relented and took me to the Air Force base hospital to get my eyes checked. No problem - my vision was 20/20. I didn't stop seeing things, though, and so my parents didn't stop arguing about my visions. I hated to hear Mom lose every time Dad would pull out his trump card: "We took him to the doctor, honey, and there's nothing wrong!" Finally I stopped mentioning it altogether. They found other things to yell about, though.

         Tumbledown Ridge was the one place I never had the visions. Jimmy would ask me about them sometimes, but I don't think he understood. He'd ask like I was seeing ghosts or pictures from the future. Then again, his dad was a set designer for scifi B-movies.
         Jimmy only finally understood when we went swimming in the cold lake atop the ridge. We had tired ourselves out by swimming and splashing. I was treading water when I saw a wriggling light on top of the water. "Jimmy, do you see it?!" I yelled, as if it were my first time wanting a witness.
         He did see it, and he shrugged it off. It was just the sun reflecting off the current swirls on top of the water made by my hands' paddling. Nothing special, certainly not a ghost-worm. Oh well, at least he knew what some of my visions looked like. But I never really saw any of those things on Tumbledown.

         In school, I was not popular. My only friends were Jimmy and anyone new who moved into town after I stopped mentioning my special sightings. Once I was almost popular. I joined the soccer team. They put me on the junior varsity with younger boys, but we went undefeated. In fact, we were never scored on until the last game of the season. We were winning when the other team got a breakaway. I was the last defender and in good position, but I blacked out and the kid went on to score. They thought I let him score on purpose. Who was I, the vision freak or the traitor?
         My dog got hit by a car, and Carrie moved away when her parents split up. I hit a parked car during another black-out episode while driving home, and Jimmy's dad moved their family to L.A. I couldn't talk to girls or play sports, so I read up on unusual happenings and the occult. I was a friendless and hopelessly weird virgin going into college. The internet was just waiting to get its hands on a guy like me.

         The online world was just growing then. Internet was widespread only among college campuses. This meant that the population was comprised mostly of young, foolish, impressionable sophomores. There were a few chatrooms but most of the action was on the bulletin boards. We'd discuss everything under the sun with so much passion you'd think we had real power. Nay, it just felt like it. It was a community, and the arguing was involvement.
         My personality was strong, and for the first time I felt popular. Maybe because I was the only person in the world sure of seeing what I alone could see, but I didn't back down or compromise when others quivered with insecurity. I called myself Bas†ion, and when people talked about me, it wasn't to call me a weirdo. This gave me confidence, and at age 18 my virginity ended in a miserable night that only gets worse in the telling. So I do not tell that story, except to say "no" whenever a survey asks about my virginity.

         Of the discussion boards I followed, I was most passionate about the poetry and political science ones. It helped that my two best friends favored those, too. Sean was my first-year roommate and majoring in international politics. Chlöe was a poet on the West Coast. I never understood her writing, but later I understood how we found ourselves running the same circles.
         Unlike many classmates who had to drop out, I wasn't sucked in by the online games. I was, however, drawn into an unhealthy disagreement with a philosophy major who went by the handle Nikolay. He was pro-socialism and that never sat well with my free-market ideals. We'd get into long arguments on the boards. He was an eloquent upperclassman from Harvard, and he treated me like a backwoods hick. But I had a strong following, and my people stuck up for me, even when I found myself arguing in circles. I felt mature and on top of things.
         Nikolay pissed me off to no end. The dude had a right to his own opinions, sure, but he frustrated me personally. I felt inferior and outcast again. Some guy a hundred miles away was spoiling my new turf where I was cool. I stayed more to the poetry boards and inadvertently cut Sean out of my routine. He dropped out after online gaming killed his grades.

         You can imagine I was not in the best frame of mind the day I saw my first and only dark-cloud vision. I was about to head downtown when suddenly it seemed to get dark. I thought a thunderstorm was rolling in, so I looked down to turn on my headlights. I backed out of my parking spot and hit a car. The sky lightened up long enough to show me clearly the events of the next two minutes.
         The passenger girl screamed, and the driver hit the brakes. They had only been going like ten miles per hour, but the fender-bender scared the girlfriend. The guy got out and started yelling at me. He used a self-righteous tone, calling me an idiot and swearing up a storm. He was an upperclassman, and for a moment I imagined him to be Nikolay. When he called me another name from three feet away, I punched him.
         It was a really good shot, right on the jaw, and it made him stumble back two steps. It was stupid of me, I know. Nikolay, for all his misguided beliefs, was well-spoken and never resorted to insults. And for all my parents' arguments, they never once struck each other. They always got through problems with time and dialogue. This oaf was not Nikolay, and the accident was my fault. I couldn't blame him...
         He hit me back. Though he was bigger than me, he was not a good puncher. I turned my head, and his fist landed over my ear. His girlfriend's eyes went wide. She was a pretty girl, with long brown wavy hair. She had rounded cheeks, not like I like, but still very attractive with the acorn shape of her face. She had her bangs tucked behind her ears, and she wore some sort of silver circlet high on her forehead. Her teeth were off-white, and her throat bulged with active vocal chords. She was shocked to see her boyfriend in a fist-fight, I imagine. Her panicked face was the last thing I saw.

         I did not feel the blow at all. I was still lucid then, though no witnesses believed so. All they saw was me standing there stupidly until the next punch put me on the ground. That was the scariest moment of my life up to that point. I lay there on my back, blood from my nose streaming into my mouth, and I couldn't see anything. I assumed my nose was broken, and I wondered if I was about to get kicked while I was down. I was, sort of...
         The guy's name was Paul, and he did not kick me. At first he sneered at me and hurled insults. But then it became obvious that something was wrong. I thought I had blood in my eyes. In fact, I did, in a way... I wiped at my eyes, but no matter how much I wiped away, I couldn't see my hands. I freaked out, and honestly I cannot remember everything I said during the next hour. Witnesses said I got my lights knocked out; sometimes I wonder at the literal second meaning.
         I was in a hospital bed and sunglasses when Mom and Dad arrived. I already knew as the doctor told them. Mom cried when he said my nose was broken. I couldn't hear Dad, but I know he cried when the doctor told them about my blindness. It was not a temporary thing. I had severe retinal damage, detachment that had been untreated for far too long. My eyes were in fact red from blood vessel hemorrhaging.
         The doctor went on to name all the usual symptoms that we should've acted on: seeing flashes of light, moving spots, blackouts, and phantasmal air waves. All were caused by retinal tearing or blood vessel irregularities. Dad was nearsighted, but he had been blinded (haha) by the fact that my vision had been 20/20. Cursory tests with reading charts didn't reveal inner-eye problems. The common eye tests performed on military bases only indicated surface issues like myopia or astigmatism.
         There were a lot of useless attempts to comfort me in those miserable first few days. There was a lot of talk I wasn't ready to hear--about blind school and braille. I shut it all out. I was friendless, hopeless, and blind. Even when I felt the sun shining through the window in my old room at home, it was dark. Not dark as in, the light is off. But dark as in, I wait to see something but I nothing ever comes. Like, I am checking for a pulse but not finding one. No sight, not ever again.

         Paul had fled the scene. I couldn't identify him anyway, could I? When the officer took my statement and asked if I wanted to press charges, I said no. Mom never understood why not, I don't think. Some bastard took her boy's eyes, and I wouldn't press charges. In my mind I knew I had started the fight, and as the doctor said, this blindness was imminent.
         Paul's girlfriend turned him in. Rather, her dad did when he filed a claim for damage to his car. His poor prospective son-in-law, however, didn't consider that he might not be to blame. He fled again the next time he saw a police cruiser flash its lights, and he ended up in a ditch with a broken neck. Mom cackled when she heard. That hurt me: I knew my problems were not Paul's fault; I did not blame him.
         Home wasn't home anymore. Everything was in the same place as it always was, and the same people were there, but it was all different. I navigated by foot memory and operated by groping. Mistakes appeared as bruises on my shins or cuts on my fingers. Mom and Dad stopped arguing. More than anything else, that unnerved me. Mom was discovering that gloating was empty comfort; she couldn't celebrate a hollow victory that didn't solve the basic problem. I think Dad was lost in guilt. He was oversolicitous, which only pointed out to me all the things I couldn't do for myself anymore. So he left me alone like I wanted.
         Without their raised voices resounding through the place, home was quiet. If only they had found something to chew the fat over, but they didn't. It was harder to hear them not talking to each other. I don't know why they didn't divorce. Taking care of me only broke all our hearts that year.

         Things didn't get better when it finally sank in that I'd never see again. Once I got over the horror of the immediate changes in my life, all the heavier ones lined up one after another to mock me. Listening to Dad watch football, I realized that I had been a decent soccer player. I'd never play team sports again, and I had wasted my chances out of choice. When I was able, I was afraid. Now I'd never win another game or hear the congratulations of teammates or the crowd. I went through computer withdrawal. Although I could still type without looking, I couldn't read the screen. I couldn't talk with my online circle for support. I couldn't go hiking alone anymore. I'd get hopelessly lost without a guide, yet I didn't care to hike with anyone, except maybe Jimmy who was 3000 miles away.

         I couldn't talk to Chlöe. Once I thought of that, an avalanche of impossibility followed. Though romance with her unknown real self had always been unlikely, still it had been in the back of my mind. What had stopped me from talking to girls before? Fear of rejection, maybe, plus awkwardness that comes with social immaturity. The only cure is social experience, which I had actively avoided. Now I had all sorts of new problems added to the mix. Forget that I couldn't tell if she was good-looking, but who would want to date a blind person? I couldn't drive, see a movie, or even work to afford anything. A girlfriend would have to adapt to my lifestyle requirements. Who would want to babysit a handicapped guy like me? I could barely dress myself, and even then I had to rely on my mother's opinion.
         When hiking, sometimes I fancied that I was climbing a mountain. Parts of Tumbledown are extremely steep, and other parts feature challenging rock formations. Every difficulty in my life before the accident had seemed like a mountain. But they were like Tumbledown: fearsome in name, but not a mountain. Well, they were mountains to deal with now.

         It was April before I tried to climb out of the valley of despair. I couldn't stand the idea of not knowing what was going on in my online hangouts. I went to my father and asked him to fire up the computer. I couldn't see the expression on his face, but he sure was eager to do anything for me. He sat with me and moved the mouse as I instructed. I typed IP addresses for email servers and bulletin boards. He read aloud what I was used to seeing myself.
         At first it was weird. Some things were a tad embarrassing or required explanation. I was on an erotic poetry mailing circle, so half my mailbox was rather explicit. After awhile though, I felt like I was coming to life. I was catching up on things, getting some semblance of normalcy back. Dad would ask questions about the online jargon and who these people were with the funny names. Dad's reading gained in expressive feeling as he came to know my circle's personalities.
         He couldn't pronounce her screen name, but the messages from Chlöe were piercing. At first there were only polite inquiries about where I went. People had assumed I graduated or dropped out or simply tuned out. Her later messages became more personal and concerned, and she even used my first name. I didn't notice; Dad had to point it out. I had him help me compose an email to her, so she would know what happened and be able to explain my absence from the online communities.

         Dad was first amazed by my typing ability and familiarity with the alien world of Telnet protocol clients. I was amazed at the insights he offered on my regular activities. He saw things about my acquaintances that I didn't realize. He missed arguing pointlessly, so he got active on the political discussion boards himself.
         I had never considered that my father might be able to share this part of my life. Now that I needed him for it, I found out he wanted it. I think we became friends. I heard something two days later that made me cry the first recent tears that weren't of despair: argument. Turned out that Mom's a liberal at heart, which opened up a bottomless can of worms. They yelled over every issue under the sun, until I didn't have to turn on the TV to enjoy pointless political crossfire.
         Chlöe's reply was strange. Dad couldn't figure out where to stress which words. Basically she was distraught, much more so than decent sympathy called for. She asked many questions, including about how I was able to email her. Even knowing that my Dad was reading everything she wrote, she plunged right ahead. She wanted to meet me in person in the summer. That topic saw a week's worth of arguing between my parents. Dad was getting a feel for her personality and thought it would be good to meet her, while Mom would rather be shot dead than let me get tangled with a desperate skank from the internet.

         I couldn't stay closed in that house forever. I dreamed of living entirely online where my sight wouldn't matter, only my opinions. But my computer time was restricted to maybe a couple hours with Dad after he got home from work. So I finally agreed to attend an adult blind school in the summer. Or maybe it was because Mom promised me a dog that I changed my mind!
         Mom knew everything it took for me to attend. She had pamphlets and primers and the principal's phone number. Even better for me, she had a colleague who hooked her up with a guide dog school. I'd get a dog for my blind school, though I was disappointed not to meet it sooner. All I knew was that it was a yellow lab.
         Summer was like a certain point near the base of Tumbledown. It's a spot on the rough trail where you think you've accomplished something. You can look back down the long hill and see the paved road twisting like a distant ribbon. But then you look up the trail and see that you aren't even a third of the way up the ridge, and it only gets steeper.
         Blind school was a lot like high school, socially. There were cool parts, boring parts, and aggravating parts. Plus I didn't see much of the other students (haha). They were all older than me, except for a 15-year-old girl who had obviously already been through a blind school. At first I wondered if she was attractive. But she kept talking at me with inane comments and I was turned off by her incessant prattle. I preferred the daily sessions with the dog trainers. Having trained the dogs already, they were now training us humans how to become a team with our dog.

         Betsy was instantly my best friend. I never understood why dogs made such good pets, until I got one of my own. Betsy's whole purpose in life was to be responsive to my needs. I needed help, and being there for me was what made her happy. In the dark hours of teary despair, she let me cry into her fur. She slept on my feet so I was never lonely in the night. Betsy had the same name as my dead grandmother, which was auspicious from the beginning. Grandma Betsy had been the only relative I could stand at the reunions, before she passed on to the next life.
         I learned to despise the word Braille. That was always the hardest class for adults, and I was no exception. My fingers could only figure out the simplest letters with any accuracy, and even then I still confused them with numbers. Gone were the days when a quick twitch of my eyes would scan a whole line's worth of meaning into my brain. Worse: the material we were reading was all classical. Instructional magazines and classic books were not interesting reading. I wanted good books, dammit. If I had to suffer through torture just to read, couldn't I at least get some Stephen King?
         On Wednesdays Mom got off work to come sit with me through the homemaking classes. I had to know how to prepare food, tell time, do personal grooming, et cetera. Mom had to know how to accomodate my methods, like not to move furniture around on me. She made Dad buy a phone that wasn't cordless, so I'd always know where one was.

         When Chlöe told me where she was going home to for the summer, I knew what she had been keeping from me. She knew me; it was Carrie. I guess we were poised for an awkward moment when the truth came out, but I took the news in stride and treated it like a good omen. I heard immense relief as she released the breath she had been holding. I hear adjectives in every sound now.
         My father had a quiet talk with her father when they came to pick me up. I couldn't recognize Carrie, so I didn't know how she might have changed. In truth, it didn't matter. The prattle girl was making me realize that looks would never matter again. Maybe a little, compatible body type, you know. But looks, a moot issue. I didn't recognize Carrie's voice, either. I hadn't heard it more than a dozen times ever. Strangely though, I recognized the touch of her hand. It was the same tentative touch as after our movie date three years ago. Again I took the strangeness as a good omen. I was comforted by it, and tentative became relaxed.

         Her dad dropped us off downtown. Carrie was good about guiding me, letting me know about curbs. Only once did another shoulder graze mine, so she must have known about spacial clearance. Sighted people take it for granted and are only subconsciously aware of the concept, I had just recently learned. Some stuff is obvious when pointed out, but it never gets pointed out because it's not generally useful to know at a conscious level.
         I was learning all sorts of things that I'd never paid attention to, though. I had to pay attention now, because there was really nothing else for me to do. We go our whole lives distracted and entertained by what passes in front of our eyes. All the gestures and looks of everyday conversation were lost to me, though, so I had to pay attention to other cues.
         Some people are blind from birth and never get to see. We know there's a big part of the world going on that they never know about. Well, that works both ways. I rely on my hearing now. I hear more than what people mean to say aloud. I hear background noises that no one bothers to explain. There's more going on in the world than sighted people think. I mentioned it to Dad once. He joked that since I was no longer seeing things, it only made sense that I started to hear things. Even Mom laughed. That lifted a huge burden off my spirit.

         Carrie and I were ironically supposed to see a movie, but we ended up just sitting and talking in the theater's main lobby for two hours. We had plenty to talk about, and of course Bas†ion had no trouble talking to Chlöe. It occurred to me that I never really knew Carrie in the first place. It was easy to simply assign her real-life name and new voice to the personality I knew online.
         She cried when she met Betsy. The full impact of the changes in my life all hit her at once, she said. I thought she must be very sensitive to begin to imagine my plight. I wasn't feeling all that handicapped while with her, though. It was when she left that I plunged back into the dark place. That second date was such an achievement for me, it dared to make me hopeful. But with hope came the daunting list of things I could never offer. It would almost have been easier on me if our conversations had gone sour.

         After blind school, Mom pushed me to go back to college. My graphics design major was a bust, so I really didn't want to put myself in the school environment again. Mom had pamphlets for me again, this time about a blind vocational school. I wasn't thrilled about that, either. Visions of surly sawyers with missing fingers crossed my mind. In the end, I went because I didn't have anything better to do.
         Blind-vo was a big waste of my time, I thought. They didn't teach any particular jobs or have a job placement program. All they did was get us practice answering phones and entering data into computers. All I really learned was that no, there were no openings anywhere for blind masseurs. Now that would have really been something.
         Being unemployed and handicapped, I developed a comfortable routine. Betsy and I had a regular route we took on daily walks to pass the time. Dad and I spent an hour nightly catching up on the boards and email. Mom and I perfected our blind-accomodating setup of the house. Cans and condiments were organized very particularly, and she glued the TV remote to the coffee table. (Dad complained for three days.)
         Mom got pretty creative. She embroidered indicator letters on each of my shirts. She said they were of matching colors, unnoticeable except to the touch. I laughed when she got salt and pepper shakers with Braille letters S and P on them. "Mom, I can tell by the number of holes on the top!" She was embarrassed but placated by my hug of thanks. I didn't think it was silly when she ordered an edition of Stephen King's newest book in Braille.

         Occasionally I'd talk to Chlöe over the phone. I love listening, infinitely more than reading. I can hear inflections in voice that you don't get in print. There is depth in conversation, even when you can't see someone's body language. We'd say the same things as in our emails, but it was a nice change of medium.
         Mom asked about her, so I knew that Dad had been working overtime in my defense. Mom was curious about her poetry, but I didn't have a good answer. "I don't read her poems anymore. I never understood them." It shouldn't have surprised me that Mom would go looking for a pamphlet on the girl. Dad steered her to Carrie's posted poetry.
         The way Mom read the words aloud was perfect. Perhaps it took a woman to understand how the words were meant, or maybe the words themselves were in the way when I had looked at them. I listened to Mom recite, and I was engrossed. There were parts of older ones that I recognized but now saw in a new light. Dad withheld comment until the end, after Mom finished the newer ones. "This girl's in love with you, son."
         He said it, and it totally jived with the direction my mind was going. Chlöe had written more in the last few months than in the whole previous year. Something was heavy on her mind, and she wondered in writing prolificly. I began to hope that it was true, that I was in her thoughts. Certain phrases seemed to indicate it, but there was enough ambiguity for reasonable doubt.

         To her mother's dismay, Carrie came back to her dad's in Maine for the holiday break. We actually saw a movie--my first movie in theater since becoming blind. I found that my imagination filled in most of the scenes, as long as the direction was thoughtful enough to provide good lines and good noise cues. Afterwards, I began to tell her something that I'd only told Betsy. Carrie and I had often discussed the difficulties I encountered, but I volunteered the one that was on at least one of our minds.
         I told her of my limited job search, which she knew already. I couldn't drive, which was obvious. I said many things that she had already heard from me, but it was necessary for me to gain courage. After enough momentum, I pushed my fears into the light. I worried about ever finding love, because I couldn't offer anything I knew of that was normal. I was stuck in a routine that guaranteed I wouldn't meet anyone new. I could function well enough to live, but I wasn't sure if I'd ever find good reason to keep doing so.
         And haunting, I was starting to lose visual memories. As a kid I saw things that weren't there. After the accident, I started losing images of things that were there. I had only vague memories of people's faces, Carrie's included. The only one I remember clearly (to this day, clearly as if it just happened) is Paul's girlfriend's shrieking face.

         Carrie took my hands then, and asked me to feel her face. It was a blind man's introduction, but one I never felt the need to do with anyone. Still, it was nice to be welcomed to touch her. My palms hovered lightly over her cheeks. My little fingers traced her hairline from her forehead down to her ears. I couldn't help but admit a sad smile--Carrie's bangs were tucked behind her ears, like Paul's girlfriend's hair.
         My thumbs found her eyebrows which were neat and thin. After months of tuning your fingers' sensitivity enough to read Braille, subtle textures are something you recognize as easily as visual patterns like plaid or polka-dots. Next I found her nose, which felt small under my forefingers. Then my fingers lightly trailed over her lips. They were soft and thin and moving toward me. She kissed me, and all I'm going to say about it is that there was no question about peeking.

         After being so long in a dark place, hope is a dangerous drug. The encouragement of her kiss broke loose something in me I hadn't meant to reveal. I wept, and she held me awhile before asking why. I was me and all my defects, not the unassailable facade of personality named Bas†ion. I was not suave and all-knowing. I was not sure of myself with another person. I wasn't sure of anything within her arms. I didn't know what she wanted or how to treat her even so. My only experience with women had been an uninformative lesson best forgotten.
         "Sweetie," she told me with her forehead pressed to mine, "everything you do is right and just what I want. Fast or slow, blind or deaf, I just want to be with you. I'm afraid, too. I don't know about this big unknown in your life. But I'm more afraid of the unknown of my life without you in it."
         I could not look into her eyes, and I don't think she looked into mine. Her soul spoke to mine, and mine finally knew how to listen deeply. She promised to accept me for who I was, and it gave me courage to face the future without a sense of overwhelming despair. Unable to see, I was able to look past sightly distractions and find something amazing waiting.

         The next summer, we went hiking up Tumbledown Ridge. It was Carrie's first time, and mine too, in a way. Betsy came along for company, but without her guide harness. I could generally describe landmarks, but the trek was new ground for us. I went up the ridge using my senses of touch and hearing. When I heard Carrie's breath become belabored, we stopped for snacks of pepperoni and walnuts and cheese. She guided me based on my directions, and it was a real team effort getting to the top. I never looked to see how far we'd come, nor how far we had to go. When Carrie's breath was stolen by the ridgetop lake, Betsy barked in celebration.

         I used to think God took away my sight as punishment for daring to answer the "blind or deaf" dilemma so easily. Now I think He did it to show me a better meaning for my answer: I always said I'd rather be able to see.