The Lettuce Fake Blindness Poll

[Admiral Yi]

Hmm?

[Maximus]

que

[Admiral Yi]

que

Lettuce has been walking around some part of Tennessee with a cane and glasses.  People are split on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Lettuce, have you been blindfolding yourself too?  I didn't catch that.

[Lettow77]

 Lettuce doesn't have glasses. It isn't my intent to appear to be blind to others- it is my intent to be blind. I just close my eyes. I have been considering getting a blindfold to make it more obvious I am not a proper blind person, in fact, but I don't have a blindfold, nor any real capacity with tying. It hasn't really come up, in any event.

Abstained from voting, for obvious reasons, although I suppose i'm interested in the results.

[Eddie Teach]

The boy's not right in the head.

[Ideologue]

WTF do you mean "real capacity for tying"?  You don't know how to tie a knot?

[MadImmortalMan]

They have those big fake pregnant bellies for men to wear so they "know how it feels". Whatever. It's harmless.

[Lettow77]

 Um, it's embarrassing to say, but I didn't really learn how to tie shoes for quite awhile. I can do it, but I can't make it look very presentable, and it's a hassle, you know? I wear flip-flops everywhere. Recently my roommate's family was concerned about my health and got me some shoes- sensitive to my shortcomings, they are not shoes you tie.

So now my feet are warm, which has made winter more fun to be outside in.

(I think I have some other shoes I got from my father somewhere.)

I don't like tying things. I'm not good at it; like my handwriting, its an embarrassing thing that I find very crude and indicative of an appalling lack of culture and upbringing, but there is only so much I can do about it.

I take your claim that i'm not right in the head slightly more seriously than I would have in the past- I don't think i'm crazy, but I've felt unwell often lately. Just megrims and the malaise, is all. I have plans for the future, but it's nothing amazing. I want to get my sonnet project done.

[MadImmortalMan]

Pretending to be blind--no big deal.


Wearing flip-flops--unforgivable.

[Sheilbh]

It's wrong.

[The Larch]

It's wrong.

Precisely. Besides, he himself called it "recreational blindness", IIRC, which strikes me as somehow fetishistic in nature, something of which he has made already many mentions.

It's just one more sign of him not being right in the head.

[Habbaku]

Total dick move.

Go get an amputation so you can "fake" being crippled.

[The Minsky Moment]

WTF do you mean "real capacity for tying"?  You don't know how to tie a knot?

You just had to take the bait.   

[Lettow77]

 It is indeed something I do primarily for my own pleasure. I don't think it enables me to understand the world of the blind very much- I can see if I need to, although I've kept my eyes closed at times I would've been very advised to open them. I just enjoy it. It lets me think differently and more carefully. Lately something i've been trying to promote is slowness with everything- I don't want to hurry through anything, and blindness puts me in the mindset of going slowly and considering everything rather effectively. There are other considerations as well that lead me to enjoy it.  It feels a welcome disconnect with the rest of the world- a sort of severance. Today when Wendys had unpleasant things that would normally have weighed me down, they were shut out of mind in a way that I would've had difficulty with typically.

  I regret that my beloved roommate didn't support the idea at all, and was torn for several days about my decision to get a cane. I skinned myself up one time when stairs jumped out at me though, and that wouldn't have happened had I had a cane (and indeed, hasn't happened since), so I figured if it was something I enjoyed, I may as well indulge it- it is the christmas gift I am getting myself for the holidays. I do not anticipate this hobby to be permanent- there are several strong pulls to cease doing it before school starts up again. The idea of someone helping me on the assumption that I am blind does embarrass me. The idea of someone interacting with me in any but the most perfunctory manner embarrasses me. It is monday night- in two days a man will come in to clean the bathroom, and I dread that contact, although he is rather friendly. 

I have actually considered sincere blindness, but it feels immoral and imprudent to blind myself at this time. I have things I want/need to do, any they require vision. I do not rule out the possibility in the future, but such an action is irreversible and calls for an enormous amount of caution and consideration- presumably I would only ever blind myself if I reached a point in life where I did not anticipate needing vision in the future. Due to the narrow band of times when this would be the case, it is highly unlikely I will blind myself. Additionally, I am unwilling to be an imposition on others to the degree that I would become without any vision. I don't want to require a handler- I want to live without anyone resenting a need to care for me. I am set to be able to do this, but that's impossible for a blind person. So in short, blindness is something I consider with fascination, but it only has application as something I indulge.

[Neil]

It's no worse than other weird things that some people do, such as being gay or going to protests.