It has always been my chief fear I’ll be struck by an automobile. Each of us has a signature fear. Franklin D. Roosevelt was afraid he’d be consumed in a house fire, his terror all the more ghastly because of paralysis. Disability dread isn’t casual like the proverbial spider in the bathtub. It’s substantial and inherently realistic and one learns to carry it as some carry memories of bad divorces or the traumas of violence.
This morning I read of the sudden death of Ben Woolf a young television actor who recently became well known for his role on the hit series “American Horror Story” Ben Woolf was born with pituitary dwarfism and accordingly was a man of short stature. On American Horror Story he played goulish figures—“freaks” in the manner of Todd Browning, and I’ll withold my opinion about whether he was exploited or not but merely quote from today’s New York Times:
Mr. Woolf, diagnosed with pituitary dwarfism when he was a child, became known for his work on the FX series “American Horror Story,” an Emmy-nominated show that features an ensemble cast. It has new characters each season and a new story line and settings that have included a haunted house, a 1960s mental hospital plagued by demons and extraterrestrials, a coven of witches, and a 1950s carnival “freak show.”
In the first season Mr. Woolf played the Infantata, the murderous ghost of a baby-turned-Frankenstein monster by his grieving parents, and in the recently concluded fourth season he played Meep, a sideshow performer with a one word vocabulary and a gift for biting the heads off live animals.
Standing just over four feet Ben Woolf would be hard to see in a busy traffic situation and that’s the tragic story as he was clipped by a vehical’s side mirror while crossing the street and knocked unconscious. He died of a stroke.
As a guide dog user I’m always, and I mean entirely thinking about the street ahead, the one I must cross. I think about a hundred things. The drivers who are naturally incompetent; those who are medicated with over the counter drugs—drugs that were formerly available only by prescription, and which, when taken without supervision, can make a person foggy. Don’t forget the drivers who are texting; who fumble for dropped lipstick; talk on their phones; spill coffee in their laps. Then there are the habitual scofflaws—the traffic light runners, the acceloristas. Blind walking requires (in the words of Lou Reed) a busload of faith to get by. In other words, to overcome my fear and navigate the day, I must imagine people are competent. It’s like the adumbrations of faith one must martial when flying on an airplane. You tell yourself the pilot is competent, the mechanics are heroic, perhaps and likely against contrary evidence. You need to get someplace. You certainly can’t stay home.
Ben Woolf died in traffic. The driver who struck him stopped. It was a genuine accident. And I’m haunted by “Infantata” the ghost of the dread streets.
Planet of the Blind 