There's nothing quite like a boarding school for bringing out the best in people, as I found to my cost one night.
As usual, the end to this particular Saturday night seemed to be approaching all too swiftly. There wasn't anything especially unique about this Saturday, so a few of us were to be found as usual down our local. There were seven or eight of us in the group, all registered blind or partially sighted, all desperately trying to drink up to avoid the wrath of the staff back at school for stumbling in after hours.
Anyone with experience of sight loss will I'm sure know how much more the journey to and from a venue for a night out can provide just as much, if not more entertainment than the night itself. So it proved here. As none of us could see all that well, we linked together with one another with arms, shoulders, canes, elbows, wrists, even necks, to form a sort of train of people, with the most sighted toward the front. For once we all made it through the doors outside without one or other of us getting stuck, squeezed or trampled, quite an event in itself given that most of us were pretty inebriated.
Once outside we split into pairs and began the stumble back up the road to college. Naturally, I wasn't exactly as alert as I try to be normally and so I not only didn't see the bus shelter, I didn't believe it was there and received a rather painful blow to my forehead, but this was nothing unusual. Everyone else eventually got wind of my minor injury and kindly waited a minute or two for me to recover.
We soon resumed our bumbling when a just a few seconds later I again smashed my head, this time against what I thought was a lamp post. As before the rest of the troop paused with some of the more compassionate or less intoxicated (I'll leave it up to you to decide which), clearly concerned for my well-being. It was only then that the most sighted individual among us reached me after backtracking from the front. Instead of showing her customary caring nature, the young lady in question burst into a hysteric fit of giggles, inspiring everyone else to join in—indeed I'd have probably been among them if I hadn't been in considerable pain, as our aforementioned companion is gifted with the most incredibly infectious laughter.
It was then that I learned just how close this particular "lamp post" was to college. In fact it wasn't a lamppost, but a road sign with a picture of blind children on, indicating the close proximity of our blind school!
If only we'd filmed it!