When I was a kid I used to think there were monsters in the attic, and unfortunately for me, the attic door was in my bedroom. I’m telling you it was a bad scene.
There was a burned clock in the attic—a strange, haunted souvenir from my mother’s childhood house which had suffered a bad fire. My mother kept this badly charred clock, a tall thing with horribly scorched wood. By day I’d tiptoe into the attic and touch the clock, make its bells chime by moving the burnt hands.
By night I’d think of Satan inside that clock.
There was also a closet in my room inside of which was a hanging garment bag—one of those giant ones with a plastic window on the side. I thought it was a robot. Or a portmanteau filled with ghosts.
I seldom slept.
All of this came to mind the other night when I saw a commercial on MSNBC during the Politics Nation show with the Rev. Al Sharpton. The ad pictured a blind woman walking with a white cane, then a man with a guide dog. The voiceover said that blind people are known to experience profound sleep deprivation and there’s a new drug that can help.
I thought this was actually rather interesting—both because there aren’t that many blind people in the United States—and then, additionally, “the blind” (a term I don’t like) are largely unemployed.
In other words there’s not a huge market for sales and yet here was an expensive prime time commercial aimed at the blind.
I still don’t know what to make of this.
One good thing though, is that the video depiction of two blind travelers was dignified.
Planet of the Blind 