I want to be liked. I bet you do too. I bet this causes you a good deal of distress in the viscera. It sure does with me. I have to stand up on occasion and say something in a professional setting that invariably puts me at center ice as the hockey people would say. In such moments I need to hold an opinion, to declare that a job candidate is insufficiently probative and perhaps even egregious within a circle of ideas and this is not fun for me. What's worse is that I can't see the people I'm talking to. I may disagree with them–or with some of them–but the hardest part is the "not seeing" for indeed most human beings convey their tribal concatenations with small facial gestures. And I, windy boy up on my soap box fail to know if any are in my tribe. Sometimes after the meeting a colleague will come over and tell me that he or she found something of what I said to be useful and by God then I'm the small boy who has been set free through a gate. I'm back in the field where I'm breathing in the open.
This is the sad thing about the matter. I want to be liked and become so tangibly mired in my blindness I can't stop worrying inwardly about the matter. It would never occur to me to think privately "who gives a tinker's damn" for I'm softly, shyly mourning the lack of the tiny facial tics of tribal ceremony. That loss is a lonely place. One that the blind are deeply inured to but only "just so" as our pal Kipling would say.
The condition I'm describing is one for which there is no solution. The blind often find that the only quasi-solution is to barge into a conversation among the sighted, a response that can be misinterpreted as egoism.
We convey so much with our glances, wandering fingers in air, eyebrows, the parenthesis of smiles or the moue of approbation. Perhaps I should make a set of flash cards and wave them like the old fashioned news boys. Perhaps.
Planet of the Blind 
And I had ANOTHER interesting experience with facial cues that actually interfered with good communication. I was speaking with a supervisor when I mentioned that I’d sent an email to so-and-so to get her perspective on a meeting that had just occurred. She suddenly scrunched up her face, and I responded by saying in a very indignant voice, “Why is it such a crime around here to network with people and share perspectives?!?” She then said, “I’m sorry, Leslie, I was listening to both you and my BlueTooth just then, and it wasn’t working well for me.” Oops.
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And I certainly hope that you don’t think that I have not become quite fond of “eavesddropping” in on your blog. (I never thought about the literal meaning of that word until it appeared in the title of your book — such an interesting connotation!) — just because I bitch about something you are ranting on every now and again. I bitch at everyone, and seem to care less and less about whether people like me or not for it as I age — although I do make the effort to be more popular whenever the specter of employment termination looms due to my rudenesses. I honestly will be quite sad to leave this website when my Salus University online instructor finally returns from maternity leave, and I must attend to other more pressing duties.
With regards to your inability to detect facial expressions when speaking to others, perhaps you have the advantage in a blog, a primarily sightless medium, because you have had more practice in figuring out meaning sans visual cues in most other situations as well.
I had an interesting experience last week watching my reflection in a glare-sensitive person’s very large mirrored sunglasses as I listened and reacted to his words. I was just absolutely fascinated, and kept thinking, “Geez, is that really what people see when they are talking to me?” It looked like a very tired person trying hard to pay attention, although I certainly was interested in what the person was telling me — no wonder people take offense!
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If it’s any consolation, I like you and your blog. I imagine some social settings and business meetings aren’t easy. It would be difficult not seeing how people are reacting and being able to quickly adjust.
As far as wheels go, they do make conversation with kids easier. My husband’s hearing is bad which makes conversation nearly impossible. I can bore people to death when speaking now because I don’t move so much when speaking because of the difficulty in doing so (lack of space). I’ve on occasion told people to this and asked them to pay closer attention to hand gestures and facial expressions. Otherwise unconscious biases come into play pretty quickly or I put people to sleep.
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This was though provoking. The wheelchair equivalent is that most conversation takes place 24 inches above my head and cannot be heard. I thought your observations may be of interest to my 16 year old son who I would like to hone his social skills. He read what you wrote and asked “Dad. that sucks. How do blind dudes meet chicks?” I love teenagers sometimes. They know how to get to down to brass tacks!
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