My view on life

Girls' Life, April, 2001 by Tiffin Cross

I love cool makeup, hot clothes and slow dancing with cute guys. So what makes me so special? You'll see.

Up for a challenge? Put on a pair of sunglasses, smear the lenses with Vaseline, and give yourself two minutes to get from the first floor/west wing to the third floor/east wing of a brand new, very huge school. And remember, you get detention for running in the hail!

Why would anyone want to take on this challenge? Well, for those of us who are in high school and visually impaired, there's not much choice. This kind of experience is my everyday reality.

A new guy can talk to me in the cafeteria or at a party, and be clueless that my vision is imperfect. A couple days later, he thinks I'm ignoring him as he waves to me on his way to biology. He doesn't know that, from a distance of 30 feet or so, it's hard for me to tell a) who's who and b) who's waving at whom. So unless I actually make a point of telling Mr. Potential Boyfriend I am visually impaired in our very first conversation, he won't figure it out.

The people who do know I am visually impaired often have stereotypes of what a visually impaired person looks like. No, I don't have dark glasses, a cane and a dog, thank you very much! Even weirder is the assumption that my lack of 20/20 means I don't care about looking good and being in style. At my hair appointment for the Winter Dance last year, the stylist was shocked: "Are you Carla's daughter? I thought you were visually impaired!" After explaining to her that I was, indeed, visually impaired, she was stunned. She said I didn't look visually impaired, that I looked too "together" to be visually impaired.

Hmm...and what exactly does a visually impaired person look like? Are we all supposed to wear piratey eye patches or something? All kidding aside, I do understand why the hairdresser said that. I know all too well. I've been through it all. My nickname in grade school was Helen Keller. My friends are all "sighted," but my activities with them are limited. In other words, I'm great to talk to on the phone and listen to CDs with, but very few have had the patience to keep track of me in a mall. Right around sixth grade, when we all started to reach "mall age," the majority of my girlfriends stopped calling.

Even now, in high school, I still get unkind comments like, "Hey, Tiffin! How many fingers am I holding up?" Some sophomore boys love to stick out their feet and try to trip me in gym class. It's been hard making friends, but the ones I do have are gems.

The thing that gets me through it is a positive attitude. I try to ignore the negative and never limit myself. Unlike some visually impaired girls I have met, I am always on the move. Even though I am not tremendously good at sports, I have tried gymnastics, tennis (with very patient partners) and golf. I love shopping and going to parties, and I go to every school dance.

I think my disability sometimes even has its advantages. A lot of my friends can't get up the nerve to ask a guy to dance, but I'm never afraid to walk up to a boy and ask him to dance. Many girls keep their distance and wait for some kind of eye contact or sign from a boy to know it's cool to make the move. Whether a boy is smiling at me or sneering from across the room, heck, I'll never know. So rather than sit and wonder, I just go ask them to dance. I don't remember ever getting turned down--probably because most guys don't expect me, the disabled girl, to be so confident. There's nothing like a little shock value.

Most boys I've gone Out with came up to me and started a conversation. A couple of times, while I was reading in study hall, guys asked me why my face was so close to the book. When I explained, it didn't seem to phase them.

As surprised as some girls are about my dating success, even more are dying to know what I do for fun. The same stuff sighted girls do! Movies, concerts. It's not like I can't hear! Swimming is actually pretty easy for me. I even like go-karting--thank heavens for those really large rubber bumpers!

My latest accomplishment? Believe it or not, I'm a volunteer reader at a nursing home. Some sighted people lose much of their eyesight as they age. I just read my large print Bible or magazines to them through my magnifiers.

Ironic, isn't it? The nicest thing is that they see me for the person I really am.