Blind Faith

Posted by John

The other night the wife and I went with some friends to see a few bands play at a place called The Basement here in town. It’s called The Basement incidentally because it’s located in a basement. Dark, musty, and cramped; the only thing missing were the rats but I imagine that’s only because they didn’t like the music. Despite its name and location, The Basement is actually a great venue to catch bands – small, intimate, and no rats, depending on the band.

We arrived early enough to see the first band set up their equipment and do a sound check. The band played a bunch of emo-ish/punk/angst-ridden songs about “the world doesn’t know who I am, pay attention to me, I’m important even though I don’t care about anything except music, video games, and emotionally dettached, angst-ridden punk rocker chicks” bullshit, and consisted of a lead guitarist/vocalist/angst-ridden-20-something-year-old-recluse, and rhythm-guitarist/keyboardist/angst-ridden-hipster-wannabe, a bassist, and a drummer. At one point while they were bringing their equipment in to set up, one of the band members walked in carrying a guitar case in one hand while holding the hand of his girlfriend with his other, who was carrying a case full of drum equipment. Now, I’m pretty allergic to all forms of PDA, but handholding in particular really gets my goat. Not only does it appear unnecessarily possessive of your significant other, but I for one prefer to keep both my hands free, in a constant state of vigilness, always at the ready for any surprises the world has to throw at me. You never know when you’ll need to deflect a would-be ninja kick, thwart a would-be purse snatcher, or catch a would-be falling baby. The absolute last thing I want to do is handicap one of my appendages by resigning it to dragging my girlfriend/wife all over the place. It just doesn’t make sense.

As much as I despise hand holding, the wife absolutely abhors it. So much so that when she saw the band member’s inexplicable hand-holding PDA she didn’t hesitate to guffaw and say, “Oh, that is so disgusting! I hate when people hold hands; it’s so ridiculous.”

Never one to miss an opportunity to make the wife feel bad, I half-jokingly said, “Well, she’s probably blind.”

“Yeah right, she’s not blind!” The wife shot back. Except, as it turns out, the girl was actually fucking blind. It became evident she had no vision a few seconds later as the boyfriend/band mate led her over to the drum kit where she helped set it all up. “Ah shit, I am such an ass,” were the next words out of the wife’s mouth.




Understandably she felt horrible and understandably I didn’t miss the opportunity to allow her to feel horrible about it. To make matters even worse for the wife though, the girl wasn’t just the girlfriend of one of the band members, it turned out she was actually the fucking drummer. And the thing was, in spite of her lack of vision she absolutely fucking rocked. She completely stole the show from her angst-ridden, emo band mates and I can only assume if she weren’t blind she’d be able to see what douches they all were and she’d move on to a bigger more badass band. I still hope she does.

The wife’s little faux pas reminded me of something I witnessed several months ago out in front of my office building where there is a large brick plaza and a small grassy tree lawn. As you can imagine, grassy real estate is quite the premium downtown so urban dog owners don’t have a lot of options for their pets’ potty breaks. So when I returned to the office one day from lunch to find a blind woman with her seeing-eye dog taking a leak on a tree not more than 5 paces from a sign that read, “NO PETS ALLOWED ON GRASS,” I just had to laugh at the irony of it.

If that wasn’t funny enough, I almost lost it when I actually witnessed the ever-attentive security guard emerge from the lobby of the building to reprimand the woman for allowing her dog to piss on the grass only to fall victim to the biggest foot-in-mouth faux pas I could ever possibly imagine when he realized she was fucking blind.

The woman didn’t take kindly to the mistake but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the first time it’d happened. In fact, if I didn’t know any better I’d say the dog was actually able to read the sign and knew exactly what he was doing:

Dog: Watch this, watch this. I’m going to piss right on this sign that says, “NO PETS ALLOWED ON GRASS.” Oh god, this is going to be an absolute riot.

Then just as he’s squeezing the last drop out: 

Dog: Oh my, that was too fun. Too fun I tell you. Oh wait, what’s this?... No, it can’t be… Oh my, it is… the security guard is actually coming out here to shoo us away. I cannot believe how hilarious this is going to be. Oh my god, here he comes. Here he comes.

Security Guard: Ma’m… Ma’am! No pets on the lawn! Ma’am!

Dog: Hahaha! This is absolute proof there is a God in heaven. Look at this! He’s getting closer and still has no idea what he’s walking into! Dear Lord, this is too precious! Wait for it… Wait for it…

Security Guard: Ma’am! No pets on the lawn! Ma’am, you need to get your dog off… Oh… Oh my… Oh I am so sorry… I had no idea…”

Dog: AHH-HAHAHA! AHHHH-HAHAHAHAHA! Oh sweet baby Jesus, do you see the look on his face? You would have thought I’d just dropped a turd right in his coffee. Oh this is too funny! Too funny! I’d piss myself if I hadn’t just pissed.

(I can assure you that last bit is funnier if you read the dog’s parts with a British accent and the security guard with a slight southern drawl.)

I know it must seem that I’m getting a proper laugh at the expense of a few blind people but I can assure you that’s not the case. Rather, the laugh is at the expense of the unfortunate individuals who’ve made a slight faux pas at the blind person's expense, or in the case of the security guard, a major one. The absolute last thing I want is for a blind person to read this and think the joke is on them because it’s not, so take that for what it’s worth.