Funny Seeing You Here

My mother tolerated my imaginative pranks, probably deeming them highly excusable frivolities given my blindness, as long as they were benign. Today, I felt particularly audacious. I finally submitted my excruciatingly boring paper on probability of coincidences to my philosophy teacher. Mr. MacDonnell is an iron-fisted educator who every fellow senior at Santa Rosa High loves to hate. Oddly, I came to appreciate his unsparing attitude, even towards me-for I despise pity. I do not exist to make others feel better about themselves. As a little boy, often savaged by brutally honest peers, I learned tricks to blend in without revealing my disability. You see, sometimes, the practical jokes were all I had.

Soon after I leaned back in the sagging velour seat, the train jolted, scraped and screeched into motion. The journey from Santa Rosa to Oakland was supposed to take fifty minutes but common travelers knew how decrepit the train really was, with constant signaling problems and engine malfunctions. Loneliness is my worst enemy; it was proving to be hard to entertain my bored mind as the minutes ticked away.

It was not until a few stops later did I hear the faint hissing of the coach’s sliding door. I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my inventiveness begging for the fellow commuter to take a spot near me. The floorboard creaked as slow footsteps grew louder. Pages, presumably from a book, flipped like wings of a butterfly. A heavy thud followed, probably the fall of a bulky binder. I heard a moan, loud and subtle-free, like the chime of an Iphone in a quiet classroom. Only a teenage girl’s temperament could unleash that flavor of exasperation. Her perfume was too fruity to belong to an adult. Yet, the way she groaned showed a recent surge of confidence, assumably through the graceless phase of puberty. I hypothesized, somewhat wishfully, that she was a year or two younger than me. I hoped that my useless eyes, which seem to have a mind of their own, did not wander aimlessly to give my secret away.

Despite the close proximity, I cursed the space between me and this fellow being. I was like a strange bird who wanted to fly into this person’s world. A swift air swept against my knees as the she took the seat opposite me. I could feel her discomfort. She was probably sitting tall and upright. I surmised that this vertical position was adopted to prevent the grime and rust from trickling into her hair. I felt a slight tremor on the floor as her foot tapped like a woodpecker. Her gawky nature made her a suitable target for banter. I was ready with my opening gambit.

“Haven't we met before?” I lied. I awaited eagerly through a seemingly eternal pause.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think we have. Do you also go to Piner High School?” she asked, somewhat hesitantly, with a blend of amusement and suspicion. Her tone was delicate, but her words came out like sharp crystals as if her mother would make her stop and repeat the words if they were not clearly enunciated. If I said yes, she would quiz me about mysterious teachers and classes. A wiser move would be to go back to elementary school days, which should now be sufficiently vague remnants of the past.

“I am quite sure we went to the same elementary school,” I claimed, hoping she would take the bait.

“No, that can’t be right. I stayed in China during those years,” she countered with sudden haste.

Dang it! Fiddling into another person’s life is a tricky game of chess. One bad move, and you are backed into a corner with no escape.

“But, I did not move until halfway through second grade,” she unconsciously re-opened the door of connection.

“Uh, yes, yes, the girl headed to China, now I remember you,” I exclaimed with coyness.

“Wow! It’s funny running into you here, after all these years.” I almost laughed at her naivete.

“Where are you headed to?” I questioned.

“San Francisco.” I sighed with relief. Her stop was before mine. I did not want her to watch me as I exited the train with my white cane.

“Yeah, I knew you looked familiar. Actually, you have not changed at all,” I went on eagerly.

“Really? How did you recognize me?” She sounded dubiously entertained. I could play safe, but I decided that life was too short for that.

“Your walk,” I said whimsically.

“My what? Are you saying you recognized me by my walk?”

“Yes.”

“Really? How do I walk?”

“With confidence. You always walked with confidence and swagger,” I flirted away.

She laughed, but I sensed a dead end to this line of conversation. So, I asked: “Why did you move to China?”

She paused. She was analyzing me. I sensed this because the hairs on my arms pricking up, usually a sign that someone is watching me closely.

“My father is a pastor. We move around a lot. I also lived in Greece.”

That was an unexpected twist. “I bet Greece is beautiful. You had lots of gyros there?”

“What is that?”

“Gyros. Gyros, like the Greek flatbreads with meats in them?”

“I’ve never seen one.”

“But you lived in Greece!” I exclaimed. What an airhead.

“Oh! Gyros,” she babbled, bollixing it up even more.

Quickly adapting the subject, she continued, “Greece is indeed a beautiful place. I enjoy seeing new places. Different colors, people and cultures.”

“It sounds amazing. How come you moved back?”

“Because I want to go to college here. Air Force Academy. I want to be a fighter pilot.”

I was surprised. She did not seem like the type to join the military. Rather, I pictured her growing up into a missionary lady with tall shoes, threadbare clothes and short hair, not somebody ready for battle.

“Why a fighter pilot?”

“My father always told me I have amazing vision and sense of direction. I am a pretty grounded person. But I really need to get over my fear of heights though.”

I almost ruptured a lung from the laughter I suppressed. Fear of heights? How can she want to be a pilot?

As if reading my bewildered mind she, yet again, changed the subject.

“What about you? ”

“Painter. Sketches of people and their expressions,” I responded.

“Can you draw my portrait?”

“With my eyes closed,” I bragged.

“How about the expressions of the hobbo right outside, on your left?”

I felt trapped. I ventured with, “Sure, I would emphasize on the wrinkled face, and his lack of …”

“You mean her lack of, right?”, she interrupted.

“Yes, of course, I must be blind,” struggling to redirect my fake gaze to the left. “I mean her lack of emotion and her obliviousness to the damn world.”

“Amazing,” she said, not very convincingly. “Hey, I think this my stop.”

I was disappointed. I was on a roll. She got up in a klutzy manner as her knees popped below her.

“It was nice seeing you, again!” she chimed meekly.

I faked a smile and forced my eyes to track her exit based on her unexpectedly sluggish footsteps. I felt good about today’s adventure.

“Nice seeing you too,” I echoed dispiritedly as the girl treaded down the platform.

Before I could start reminiscing about the pleasant encounter, a boy asked if the seat in front of me was taken. It took more effort, but I kept the pretense of sightedness, and I nodded with a smirk.

“Hey dude, who is the girl you were just talking to?”

“I actually don’t know her,” I told truthfully, for a change.

“What a gorgeous girl. How sad.”

“What do you mean?”

“She is blind, dude! Couldn’t you see that?”

I was silent for the rest of the ride. I was in disbelief. Everything she said was being replayed in my mind like an endless game of spin-the-bottle, all pointing towards the same evidence: she figured out I was blind too, because a person with functional eyes would have seen she has no vision. So, she wanted to be a pilot, and loved colors, people and places-I would not have lied more convincingly. She probably also made up going to Greece or China, which explains why she did not know what gyro is. There was no “hobo to the left”. I fell right into the trap.

The girl knew I was lying blatantly, and she swung away gloriously with her own fiction. This entire time I thought I was playing her like a fiddle, but really, she turned out to be the conductor. It took a kindred spirit to understand my game. Ironically, had she been a person who could see, she would have been in the dark-only a blind person could see right through my lies.