Category: Let's talk
I saw the Devil's Mistress post a topic on funny questions sighted people ask blind people and was reminded of all the questions I ask the poor people who work the front desk at my dorm. I thus decided to make a sister topicfunny (but sadly true) questions blind people ask sighted people. Here are some of mine:
How's my makeup? Is this right-side up before I staple it? How did this print-out turn out? Is this check legible? These are ones, right? What CD/textbook is this? I can't remember. What color is this? Does this match? What does this úber-long text say that my phone won't read to me? Can you read me this random letter I got in the mail? No, I don't care if it's confidential. Can you help me fill out the housing checklist? It's inaccessible. What events are going on in the dorm that are on posters that I can't read? The vending machine has been switched around, and I don't want Cheetos again...can someone help me relearn it? There's a bug in my room! PLEASE kill it!
No it doesn't hurt to ask. But I don't like doing it but some times you have to ask.
lol. good ones
which debit card is this?
Where do I sign? ...No, telling me to sign on the line isn't quite enough information in my case.
Is my phone on?
What's on my computer screen?
O, I forgot one: can you solve this captcha for me?
Excellent ones so far. I can't think of any that haven't been mentioned yet. However, I can answer the one regarding telling if your phone is on. AT least with my cell phone, the buttons make a noise when I press them. If the phone is not on, there is no noise.
Ooh the CAPTCHA one is a good one! Or how about when Pandowasn't accessible, and I'd hear a song I really liked and take a screenshot and send it to my BF syaing, "Name that song." Lol!
Well, I guess now that directionsforme.org exists this is not as much of a bother anymore, but there's
At what temperature and how long do I cook this pizza?
Oh, and here's a tip for knowing if phones or other electronics are on. Get hold of a cheap radio that has the AM band on it. Tune to an empty part of the band and hold your device near the radio. If it makes noise it's probably on.
i'm tired of having odd socks on, and takes me forever to match it, can you help me to match my socks?
Lol! At both of you!
thanks for the suggestion about electronics. I rarely have to ask that question, but like all the others, occasionally it must be asked. haha.
What about the times we need help finding something we have dropped or misplaced. A sighted person would be able to look around and visually spot the item, but I can't tell you how many times I have dropped something and had to get down on my hands and knees to find it and even sometimes had to give up and wait until someone with sight could help me.
I can't even count the times that's happened. Sometimes you just end up finding it later on your own.
Agreeeeeeee!
I agree with LibraLady, isn't it amazing how far a piece of paper will slide on a tiled floor?
As far as the "do these socks match?" question goes: I once had all my socks matched, but lately I've got this growing pile of "I have no earthly idea" pile of unmatched socks. What's a fella to do?
Bob
Yeah I have several socks that have no matches either lol... so those are the socks I just wear around the house.
hahaha. i have some sight, but for some reason, my socks' partner choose to deserted it's partner. So, Bob, sorry, no tips and tricks for you there. Although, i heard ones about putting on a safety pin on socks, e.g. black will have a pin on top, blue on the middle, white on the bottom and so on. But i don't know how it works, if it works at all, as i don't have personal experience on that.
PS: Maybe we should start up our own odd socks group? lol JK
hahahahahaha or the odd socks club lol...
I don't know where to get them, but there is a product called sock rings where you put one awround a pair of socks when you get ready to put them into the washer. This also keeps them together n your drawer until you are ready to wear them. There are also braille clothing labels that can either be sewn or safety pinned to socks and other items of clothing. Of course you will have to get someone to go through your pile of unmatched socks with you and help match them up, but once you get them matched up there these products you can use to help keep them matched.
I have a bag of sock rings. from LSS Products for $3.45. I think 24 come in a pack. You can put a pair of socks in the ring and safety pin or tie a label onto the ring. I use either braille clothing labels or Sherlock labels depending on the color.
I don't usually ask sighted people for help unless I wonder about matching, which is rare. And I sometimes ask someone to read my mail; though at my school, when I get my mail from my mailbox, I'll just ask the person at the front desk to tell me what's what.
My personal favorite... "Did I get all the stains out of the carpet?" I hate carpet! It doesn't mix well with kids and dogs. lol
AND WHAT About stains on your clothes? SOMETIMES you can feel them, but other times you have a stain that you don't know about until someone tells you, usually in a very loud voice around plenty of other people.
Pointing to a vehicle in front of my house, I asked this kid who was my neighbor, "Excuse me. What does that say?" Lol I asked because sometimes the drivers for paratransit don't say anything or come out and escort the passenger like you request, and many other vehicles would pull up sounding exactly alike so I wanted to be sure, cause you know those bastards would sit there, stare at you then leave. Hahaha!
True question I texted a friend a couple weeks ago. "Hey, can you come up and help me unmute my computer, I don't know how." lol, you can't get worse than that one
hahahahahaha I accidentally muted my laptop at school once too, and didn't know where the button was to unmute it until someone showed me.
Lol lol me too! And my bf and I video called his aunt on skype. She spent quite some time trying to navigate us around the screan only for me to find out later that I accidently turned the volume down which was on the keyboard itself.
I love where this topic has gone! A few responses:
On the socks thing, I just make sure my clothign feels different so I'll remember. As far as the Laundry Monster eating them, though, I can't seem to get around that one.
Stians in clothes are so annoying. I had a stain in my favorite shirt and didn't know it, washed it several times probably and now it's stuck. Oh well...
I lost a ring that way. Had taken it off while drifting to sleep reading Shakespeare. Had been fidgeting with it and just didn't put it back on. Rolled off the bed. Tore up my entire room to find it. Called my suite mate in a panic and asked her if she could take a look. It was sitting right by my guitar case. I was torn between being overjoyed that it was in such an easy place and disgruntled that I hadn't found it. I posted about it at @BlindieProblems, my blind humor page, and someone replied that having lost the ring and not being able to find it wasn't so much a blindie problem as it was that I valued the ring so much. Asshole didn't know it was a ring my grandmother had given me, and I'm not materialistic but I am sentimental. Besides which, it's frustrating to lose things like that.
I have sooo muted my computer on accident and it sucks. So hae my other blind family members. Now that I know computers better it doesn't happen much, though, thank God...usually only with a foreign computer, and usuallly only if someone else has muted it and I can't get it back on. Similarly, don't you love having to ask people why your computer is stuck during the bootup process and what stage it is in? Oy!
I have to ask people which buses things are all the time, if not the drivers themselves. It was nerve-racking at first, but not so much now.
Okay one final blurb: how 'bout one that will really throw the sighties for a loop?: Asking if a picture turned out well. Lol!
what about a sighty telling you that "oh, you got your picture up side down". lol
When I had socks I couldn't tell apart, I tied them together at the top when I threw them in the laundry.
Despite what some might have said, they never did come out less than clean. A washing machine will take care of business that way. It's pretty easy to knot the two together at the top without any additional pins and other accessories to fall off in the wash and maybe get stuck under the agitator.
Um! Labels don't usually come off in the washer or dryer. It happens occasionally, but it's really not a pain in the ass where they get stuck in any of the machinery. You just find it at the bottom, take it out and pin it back on.
Yeah, I've totally asked about profile pics before putting them up of course. I also ask about PowerPoints or Spreadsheets to make sure all the text is showing in a column.
I've never knotted socks, but I once accidentally washed a pair still mated and balled up, and it was fine.
Melissa, I used to ask how was my make up a lot when I first started whering it because it would often get smudged or I would put too much on or whatever. Now that I've practiced it a lot, I generally put it on right except when I'm rushing. That happened to me this morning, I got mascara on my nose because I was in a hurry, and someone told me about it at the doctors office. I don't mind though, I would rather know about it so I can fix it, so I can look my best, or at least try to look nice lol.
Here's another one: I was in a computer lab by myselfm spending time at the computer. But when it was time to leave, and since logging in is required to use a computer at school, I needed to stop someone in the hall to ask if they could help me log out. A couple of people I stopped told me they didn't know how to do that, but my tutor was the 3rd to pass by, so he logged me out.
As for the sock-matching, I pin them together with safety pins right after I take them off. My mom even likes this idea; it just makes it easier and more convenient not having to spend time matching up each pair of socks. To make sure that they don't tear off easily, I don't pin them too close to the edge of their material.
I have been doing basic makeup off and on for the past five years or so. Shit still happens from time to time, so I can never be too careful. I have lost my central vision so am going to say bye-bye to long mascara wands and get a short one like my grandmother, also blind, uses.
How about when you print something out, and for whatever reason the printer decides to chuck all the pages on the floor, so you have to ask someone what the right order is and whether they're facing the right way. Ugh.
That reminds me about something else irritating involving printers. In my past job as a word processor, sometimes I would print out a long report, turn it in, and then later the proofreader would come to me and tell me the pages were blank because my printer needed a new cartridge.
oh libra lady, i can feel your pain. back in the day when dinosaurs freely roamed about the earth, when i was a college sophomore, i turned in a paper to a social work proff. he was a very strict man. this was before pcs and printers. it was typed and the ribbon had run out. then i retyped the 30 page monstrosity only to find out that my footnotes were off by one. grrrrr!!!
Feeling Turricane's pain over here.
And some brilliant HR type in the mid 1990s was not happy with a solution we had for a particular problem, so she created a problem, er, solution of her own.
We used to get MSD reports by fax from customers with problems. If you don't know what an MSD report is, you are indeed a better person for it. It's a pseudo-graphical diagnostic dump, a giant computer turd, from the Dirty Operating System we all used to know and loathe to network upon.
My solution? Take someone else's email research project, they would take my fax. Well the individual of the alternative HR persuasion/lifestyle insisted I had to do my own MSD report evaluations, and they would give me a reader. Basically one of the admin assistant people to be my eyes for the occasion. Had I been new to the task, this would have been even more difficult for the poor reader, and more frustrating to me getting the job done, than it already was. Fortunately, I was able to give direction as to what to look for, except in cases where the output was a complete mess. After a week of this foolishness, the reader finally complained to her boss, because she had been led to believe she just had to "read a few things for the blind man". They made it sound like mail or a post-it note or something apparently. And, like most normal people, looking at diagnostic reports wasn't anything she did on even a semi-regular basis.
Fortunately, somebody saw reason and let us resume things the way we'd actually been doing them, a rather logical and symbiotic relationship. I guess that's what I got having them diversity types around. Somebody came and apologized to me, but I actually felt sorry for the poor reader. Looking at diagnostic output is a lot different than "reading something". You don't start at top left and work your way to bottom right, like reading a letter or something. Guess I'll never know, but I don't think she held it against me: I'd made it quite clear I hadn't put her up to it. After she was relieved of that misdirected duty, she was swallowed up by Cube City just like the rest of us, so I never saw her again, might not even recognize her 16 years later.
Wow that sounds like quite a situation...
God, and I thought the printers were an issue! I swear I will never complain again! I love all your stories, though.
What made me laugh is this little gem.
"How's my makeup? Is this right-side up before I staple it?"
it sort of made it sound like you were able to staple your makeup on. Oh, what a handy way to do it. Made it sound like it was some sort of weird mask.
it' amazing to me how much of this stuff has to do with makeup. Never wear it never wore and never shall change. God made me a pinto, and putting all that stuff on my face will only make me a pinto with a variable paint job.
I used to wear makeup when I had enough vision to apply it. But now without sight, I don't have the confidence, so lip stick is all I wear. I remember one job I had where I had to dress professionally, I felt I needed to wear makeup. Almost on a daily basis this one woman would approach me with a tissue and start rubbing at one of my cheeks telling me my blusher was not even or that I had more on one cheek than the other. I appreciated her help, but it was embarrassing, so I decided not to wear it anymore.
libra lady i never wear it. people ask me why and i say it is my religion. this is partially true, but no one argues when i say it.
I agree with turricane; I don't wear makeup, and don't care to. I'm beautiful without it, and anyone who tells me otherwise is either jealous of my beauty or flat out lying.
in cases where special occasions require it (rarely ever) I don't mind having someone apply it for me.
Maybe it's a Northwest thing, I don't know: But most people out here think that if you don't wear makeup, you are probably into "natural beauty". That is, in and of itself, a trend.
Or at least it was when I was younger, unattached, and out prowling around.
it probably is leo and it is a good thing. my kids laugh at what i wear too. i'm in to long skirts and peasant blouses i guess they call it boho. oh yes maxi dresses are great too. you know, when i was a kid i did what i was told, wore what i was supposed to andwas miserable. at 54 who the heck cares.
as sophia loren, for you young pups, a very sexy movie star in the 1960s/70s, once said "true sex appeal comes from inside. if you hate yourself and your looks all the makeup and fashion will still reveal a miserable insecure person. women who love their bodies flaws and all are the most beautiful of all." since she was a physical goddess how can she rally know that, but i still have adopted her attitude.
What about when your button or zipper come undone, and someone gentlely remind you that your button/zip/whatever come undone?
post 48, wow, that totally makes sense. :)
Lmfao at posts 42, 43, and 49--man, this topic has grown quite a bit. :D
To clarify, I wear very little makeup--just powder base, lip balm that's invisible anyway, and mascara from time to time. If I do wear it at all.
I use a brand of make up called eyes lips face, it's powder base, and a little goes a long way. It's very cheap but high quality. Unlike other brands I've tried it doesn't make my skin oily or break out. I only wear foundation, blush, eye shadow, mascara and lip gloss.
I use Lorielle's version of Bare Minerls. Works pretty damn good if I do say so myself :D
But anyway, here's a good new question I asked the other day: Did I unclog my paper shredder all the way? ol!
That last one is a really good question.
Every man has been caught with the fly undone after a quick trip to the head, be they blind, sighted, black, white or otherwise artificially differentiated. My only impulse, after being prompted the fly was undone, is to try and figure when I had last been to the head, hoping desperately I hadn't been running around for a couple hours like that.
Here's one you and I won't get, but anyone sighted who gasses the car up outside of Oregon (where we have station attendants that do it):
"Sir, don't drive off yet. The gas cap is sitting on top of your car."
That's a really expensive mistake and trust me, I've seen that one happen on several occasions.