Ryan Knighton
Appearances
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
And I'm like, aha! the desk, right? So I feel around on the desk and there's a lamp and there's the notepad I'll never use and there's stuff, but there's no phone. So I'm left to my last sort of blind guy resort, which is I go back to the beginning, you know, back to the bed and I find the wall and I start Marcel Marceau-ing the walls.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
You know, I'm wiping them up and down and I round the fourth corner and I get to the bathroom and I go past the bathroom and there's nothing. And I feel behind me again, and the bed is back behind me again. So I've circled this room. And I even thought, well, maybe it's like a super fancy hotel, and maybe there's a phone in the bathroom. And I go in there, and there's nothing.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
So I circle the room two more times this way, wiping it down. And I check the coffee table again. I check the desk again. And I just figure, forget it. I'll just go to bed and try again tomorrow.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
And the phone is on a coffee table. Now, I know I felt that thing up to an illicit degree. Like, I mauled that coffee table, and there was nothing on that table last night. And so I answer the phone, and it's my wife. And she says, why didn't you call me last night? And I said, well, there was no phone. But there is now.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
And so I walk into the room and I find the bed. And then to the left of the bed I feel along and I find this nightstand. which is where I expect the phone to be. And so I feel up the nightstand and there's no phone. Fine, so I reach across the bed to the other side and find the other nightstand. And I feel that one up and there's no phone. That's unusual, right? It's a bit odd, right?
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
And so we talk, and then I hang up the phone, and I go to get back into bed. And there's now a wall there.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
And I'm totally disoriented at this point. Like, it's funny and it's also sort of terrifying because I know the bed was there and now there's a wall and I keep touching the wall thinking maybe this time it'll go away. And I go to the left, and there's another wall now. And I'm a grown man, and I'm lost in a hotel room. So what's your next move? What do you do?
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
I ended up doing the Marcel Marceau thing. I start wiping the walls, feeling my way along the edges, and it wraps back around until I find the bed is actually behind me.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
So here's what the room actually looked like. There are two coffee tables and two sofas on the left and the right side of the bed.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
And this is the problem. When you're blind, you just can't assume anything. And the problem is you get a picture in your mind, and if you get it wrong...
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
It took me a long time to come to understand that blindness actually wasn't the main problem. The main problem was embarrassment. That, you know, I had to sort of give myself over to the slapstick of things.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
I couldn't wait to tell my daughter that I'm, you know, a blind guy. And I'm not saying I was excited to tell her. I'm saying I couldn't wait to tell her in a way that she could actually grasp the basic concept of blindness. The trouble is a two-year-old can't imagine what it's like to be another person, let alone imagine an entirely different physical reality like blindness. I'd say to her,
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
Papa sees what you see when you close your eyes, but mine are open, which makes no sense to anybody. So the miscommunications began to pile up between us. One day, I'm standing in the hallway of our house, and Tess either kicked or rolled this foam soccer ball to me. Foam soccer balls are really quiet. You see my problem. And it rolled by, yes. And I ignored it. But I didn't know it was there.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
And she got upset. She wants to know why didn't I kick it back to her? Why didn't I want to play with her? And she began to cry. Now, I don't know what's going on at all. So I'm just saying things like, what's wrong, pumpkin? And like, hey, why don't you go get your ball or something? Later on, my wife did see this happen later on, and only then did I learn how I was rejecting my kid all day.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
And part of me felt useless as a father, and another part of me just felt really angry at Nerf. Another time, I picked up Tessa to daycare, and, you know,
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
Papa, papa, she screams as I walk in and she sees me and I squat down and I open my arms and I wait for the hug because it's best that I wait because the floor is dotted with babies between us and nothing ruins our sweet moment like me stomping on babies. So her body slams into mine and she wraps herself in a monkey hug and I tell her how much I missed her and of course to that she cries.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
And so I turn to where I think there might be a table, and poof, there's a coffee table. So I grope this coffee table for a while, and there's no phone on it. Grope is kind of a funny word to use for this. It sort of feels that way, though. You know, you're just sort of, because you don't know where anything begins or ends, so you really maul it.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
But she cried on the other side of the room. And suddenly, I feel this body, and it's not familiar, and in fact, it's a little boy. And Tess is crying, Papa, Papa, as if the word itself hurts on the other side of the room. And so she just can't understand why I've hugged another child, and I chase after the sound of her, and I'm sorry about the babies.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
So the miscommunications piled up and they were mostly just little heartbreaks, but sometimes they were dangerous. You know, there's times when I would walk her to the daycare in the morning, and I work at a university, and we'd walk across campus together in the morning, and she'd be in one of those NASCAR roll cage backpack things, which are great for blind fathers.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
And we'd make our way across campus, and it's beautiful, it's in the mountains, and it's forested. And I say this just so you can understand my legitimate panic, when from her backpack, she said to me one of her few words. She said, bear. Bear. And I froze. What's that, pumpkin? And I turned, because I can still see some smears, so I looked for a big black one. Bear. And I said, there?
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
Like, we're going over there? And she's, bear, bear. And she's getting more upset very clearly. Now, this is Canada. We're in the forest. This is the mountains. And the bears love our dumpsters. They dine frequently. The security guards just tell us which entrances and exits to avoid.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
And they even just lock down the daycare and let the kids bust out the goldfish crackers and watch the bears from the windows like some demented drive-in movie. And now Tess is watching one from the comfort of my back. And where it is, I have no idea. Now I can feel she's upset and she's sort of leaning. So I reached behind me and I grabbed her hand and she was pointing right behind us.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
So I reeled around to face the bear and I smelled for it. And I have no idea what bear smell is. Now I didn't know if I should run or if it would startle the bear to charge us or if I would just run into the bear and that would be ironic. So I said, let's just go this way, pumpkin. And I started to run and she got really upset. So I said, actually, let's go this way. And she got really upset.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
I thought, well, you know, and I'm running, I'm pinballing around this parking lot, like with a baby on my back, like a Geiger counter. And And then it occurs to me, and I reach back with both hands, and yeah, she dropped her teddy bear. And yeah, she'd grown a little frustrated. But everything changed when she was three, and I remember the exact moment.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
We were sitting in the kitchen, and I asked her to pass me a cookie, and she did, and I reached for it and did my usual dumb crab pinching the air thing, and she said, Papa doesn't see. And I thought, that's what I've been saying! We said, yes, Tess, Papa doesn't see. And then she had to check. Mommy sees? And we said, yes, Mommy sees. And she said, Tess sees? And we said, yes, you see.
This American Life
464: Invisible Made Visible
And one week later, we were sitting in the living room, and she was watching Sesame Street or something. And she said, Papa, who's that? And I said, ah, Papa doesn't see. And so she grabbed my hand and she put it on the screen. And she drew it over whatever she was looking at. Thank you.