I went out with a group of friends re­cent­ly, and some­where be­tween an ex­cel­lent lunch, a bowl­ing ball that was much heav­ier than I ex­pect­ed, and a woman at Cinnabon who ap­par­ent­ly for­got that blind peo­ple can speak for them­selves, I found my­self think­ing about what good ser­vice and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty ac­tu­al­ly look like.

Lunch was a very good place to start. My boyfriend and I tried fried squid for the first time, and ad­mit­ted­ly, I was hes­i­tant. I had no idea what it was go­ing to taste like, and I wasn’t en­tire­ly con­vinced that squid be­longed any­where near my plate. Then I tried it and dis­cov­ered it tast­ed like shrimp.

My chick­en fried rice was de­li­cious, my friend’s sweet and sour chick­en was ab­solute­ly sub­lime, and by the time we were fin­ished eat­ing, I was al­ready plot­ting the next time I’d be back.

The food was great, but the ser­vice was just as good. Our serv­er was at­ten­tive and ac­com­mo­dat­ing, and he even brought his su­per­vi­sor over. They spoke di­rect­ly to us, lis­tened to what we said and made sure we were com­fort­able with­out mak­ing a big pro­duc­tion out of our blind­ness. It was sim­ply good ser­vice.

Then we went bowl­ing.

I walked in­to the bowl­ing al­ley think­ing, I play goal­ball. How hard can this be? Well, I found out.

The bowl­ing al­ley was loud, with mu­sic play­ing, peo­ple talk­ing and cheer­ing, balls rolling down the lanes and pins crash­ing. It was a lit­tle dis­ori­ent­ing at first, but the mu­sic was good, so I set­tled in­to it. I could hear the bowl­ing balls when peo­ple threw them, but I re­al­ly wished I could hear the pins more clear­ly. There is some­thing about that sat­is­fy­ing crash when some­body gets a good hit that I want­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence for my­self.

I al­so dis­cov­ered that bowl­ing is a lot more pre­cise than goal­ball. In goal­ball, you have more room to use an­gles. Bowl­ing gives you a nar­row lane and ba­si­cal­ly says, good luck. I con­sid­ered try­ing a goal­ball coop throw, where you face the goal­post and throw the ball back­wards be­tween your legs. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, bowl­ing balls are a lot heav­ier than goal­balls, so I was ad­vised against it.

See­ing as how I threw my ball clear in­to the oth­er lane at one point, that was prob­a­bly for the good of every­one in­volved.

There were ten of us, in­clud­ing sight­ed peo­ple, and six of us were blind or vi­su­al­ly im­paired. We had made our reser­va­tion and had per­mis­sion to use the lane… There was re­al­ly noth­ing ex­tra­or­di­nary about it. Blind peo­ple hang­ing out, try­ing some­thing new and hav­ing a good time should be as or­di­nary as any­one else do­ing the same thing.

Then one of the work­ers came over.

He had been told that six of us were blind or vi­su­al­ly im­paired, so I as­sumed he want­ed to find out if we need­ed any help. In­stead, he start­ed show­ing us things on a screen that none of us could see.

He al­so demon­strat­ed how to hold the bowl­ing ball, ex­cept the ball was be­ing held out of reach rather than placed in­to some­one’s hands or ex­plained in a way we could ac­tu­al­ly fol­low. Staff mem­bers were al­so walk­ing around be­hind us while we were bowl­ing.

I un­der­stand want­i­ng to help. The tricky part is that help can look very dif­fer­ent from one per­son to an­oth­er. One per­son might want an ex­pla­na­tion, an­oth­er might want to feel where some­thing is, and some­one else might al­ready know what they’re do­ing. A sim­ple ques­tion would have cleared that up.

What re­al­ly both­ered me was the at­ti­tude that came with it. When some­body has al­ready de­cid­ed what you need, it can be dif­fi­cult to ex­plain that their idea of help­ful isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly yours. It be­comes even more awk­ward when the con­ver­sa­tion ends with you be­ing told that you have an at­ti­tude.

And there were six blind or vi­su­al­ly im­paired peo­ple right there, along with the sight­ed peo­ple who came with us. If any­one was cu­ri­ous about how we were man­ag­ing, they didn’t have to guess.

Af­ter bowl­ing, we went to Cinnabon, and that brought an­oth­er kind of an­noy­ance.

You know when you walk up to a counter, look at the menu, de­cide what you want and then get told they don’t have it? So you ask, “Okay, well, what do you have?”

That’s what we did.

The woman be­hind the counter spoke to the per­son ac­com­pa­ny­ing us in­stead of speak­ing di­rect­ly to us. She al­so didn’t clear­ly tell us which va­ri­eties were un­avail­able. We asked what they had be­cause the sign didn’t in­di­cate what was sold out. Even our sight­ed guide, with her two func­tion­ing eyes, couldn’t have known with­out ask­ing.

And hon­est­ly, even if we had all been sight­ed, I’d still have been an­noyed. This wasn’t a blind­ness is­sue. It was a cus­tomer ser­vice is­sue.

The con­trast with lunch was pret­ty strik­ing. Our restau­rant serv­er and his su­per­vi­sor spoke to us, lis­tened to us and helped when nec­es­sary. They didn’t need a spe­cial script or a com­pli­cat­ed un­der­stand­ing of blind­ness. They paid at­ten­tion to the peo­ple sit­ting in front of them.

The frus­trat­ing mo­ments didn’t ru­in the day. I still had a great time, and that’s what I want to re­mem­ber. The food, the mu­sic, the laugh­ter, try­ing some­thing I’d nev­er done be­fore, even fail­ing spec­tac­u­lar­ly at bowl­ing.

A group of friends went out, tried some­thing new and had a good time. It shouldn’t have to be re­mark­able just be­cause some of us were blind.

This col­umn is sup­plied in con­junc­tion with the T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion

Head­quar­ters: 118 Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad Email: ttb­wa1914@gmail.com, Phone: (868) 624-4675, What­sApp: (868) 395-3086