by Tim Forder
Loudly, I proclaimed, “Well, tell Charlie that if he does not get his ass out here right now I will go back there to see him, and he will not be happy.”
No sooner than that was said then some big guy was standing behind the counter-girl apologizing profusely. I can’t imagine Charlie knew what he was apologizing for, but he was very enthusiastically doing so.
Finding ourselves between the end of the front counter and right next to some bar seats where a diner could sit and look out into the parking lot, I introduced myself as Erica’s brother and invited him to be seated; he sat. Taking the bar stool next to him I began giving him a verbal lesson in manners his parents should have given him, on how men should treat women as ladies. I’m not saying women are second-rate citizens, I just believe woman should be treated like ladies not like hookers. He seemed to hang on every word. I finished my lecture by saying, “If my sister should tell me you require a second, more physical lesson on the subject, I will be back.”
At this point, I noticed that the two serving girls where wiping down the cash register so as to be in easy eavesdropping distance, so I added, a little louder for their benefit, “In fact, if my sister tells me you’re still having trouble behaving around any of the girls here, I will be back for that second lesson.”
He assured me that would not be necessary, and it wasn’t. There was an interesting development to this. In the future when I walked in and ordered and paid for a small drink, I’d receive a tray with a large drink, large fries and a roast beef and possibly even a hamburger. While this was really cool, I was a little worried that this gratitude from the girls might get them into trouble, since they were handing out free food. I told my sister that, while I was enjoying the free food, I did not want the girls getting in trouble for it. She informed me that the female manager was very aware of the “Charlie” problem, but was at a loss to figure out how to handle it. She was very appreciative of my handling the problem for her. The free meals were her request. They were orders the girls enjoyed fulfilling.
Growing up, I developed an old-fashioned attitude toward women and a man’s treatment of a woman. In my first year of junior high school, apparently there were enough of us students coming out of “special education” that some county school brain thought it was a good idea to combine all of us into our own special class of retards. This class consisted of mental misfits like Jack who did not talk much, but if asked a direct question would answer by clucking like a chicken, or Betty who didn’t know much, except that she was easy on the eyes. She spent a lot of time messing with her hair and her clothes. Then there were the mental delinquents like the James Gang (as in Jesse James gang). This “gang” consisted of Jose, who was mostly mouth, and James who could protect Jose from his big mouth. Then there were students like myself, who had come through the “special education” program as a way of making up school years due to health or a physical handicap.
One day, the teacher, who looked as if she were young enough to have come right out of college, could not find the book of poems from which she had planned to read. With the school library right outside the door, she decided she would trust the class to behave long enough to get another copy of the book. This lack of judgment just shows that she probably was just out of college and this was her first class.
After she left the room, one of the guys proudly showed off his possession of the missing book. While making a big deal of putting the book back from where he temporarily stole it, Jose (a real moral degenerate with a big mouth) commented to Betty, a real shapely, blue-eyed blond, how nice her outfit looked. He finished his discourse with on her attire, “but it would look even nicer on the empty chair beside you.”
Betty responded, “Like you’ll ever see that.”
“Bet you I will,” Jose retorted. He then got out of his chair and made a big deal about walking up to Betty, who was not very bright. She supported her challenge by getting out of her chair to face off Jose.
Betty was wearing a white blouse with a dark blue vest that matched her skirt. Once in front of her, he started making a big production of unbuttoning her vest.
Betty just stood there, looking incredulous, and the class looked on.
After Jose had Betty’s vest unbuttoned, in show-off fashion, he flicked the vest off her shoulders, and it fell to the floor.
The class looked on, in silence.
As Betty just stood looking shocked, Jose this rape was going too far, and I started looking for the return of the teacher, meanwhile Jose continued unbuttoning Betty’s blouse. Betty, like a deer in headlights, just stood there looking shocked, and the class just looked on.
When Jose had her blouse more than half-unbuttoned, and Betty’s white bra was making an appearance, things, in my opinion, had gone too far.
As the class just looked on, I looked toward the doorway for the expected re-appearance of the teacher. Since her re-appearance was not yet forthcoming, I made my move.
I charged out of my seat, rushed up beside Jose and, feeling full of moral fortitude, grabbed a handful of the back of his shirt and pulled him off Betty. With rapist and victim separated, I stepped in between them. While I just stood there quietly daring Jose to make a move, Betty stood behind me, just crying.
Three girls jumped into action. While two of them got Betty back into her seat, the third grabbed up Betty’s vest and the three girls went about redressing Betty while trying to calm her down. They were failing. As Betty continued crying, the girls got her clothes back on her. Meanwhile I just stood there feeling full of holy righteousness, waiting for Jose to make the wrong move, any move, and they would be cleaning him off the walls and ceiling.
The very mouthy Jose just stood there staring back at me, too wary to even say a word. I guess he was not totally stupid (just sounded totally stupid a lot).
The teacher finally walked in and ordered, “To your seats, everyone.”
As “everyone” obeyed, she marched back behind her desk, slammed the book in her hand down onto the prodigal book and announced in her best demigod voice, “Nothing happened. I was not here so nothing happened,” and that was the last of that—I wish. (But that’s another story.)
While in high school, I had one girlfriend that lasted one date. Christina and I not only went to the same high school, but also attended the same church. I turned a youth church outing into a date for the two of us. First, we went with the group to a Rock-n-Roll Christian band concert, and then we ordered pizza at the neighborhood Pizza Pub.
After placing our order at the register and getting our dinner number, Christina followed my lead to separate from the rest of the group for our date. It was just my luck that two young under-aged drunks took a shine to Christina and followed us. After we found a seat and the drunks tried to join us, I politely asked the two to leave, “We like it right here, don’t we Bill?”
So we tried to move back within the safety of the group with whom we had arrived, but there were no seats anywhere near them, so we sat where we could, and the drunks followed.
At a new table, I sat down across from my lovely date to enjoy her beauty and the two drunks moved in, one standing on either side of her. The mouthier of the two set his pitcher of beer and his mug down on the table between us. Following this, he placed his mouth close to Christina’s ear and, between her eyes widening and his hand holding his crotch, I could guess what he asked her.
In one fluid movement, I shot out of my seat and planted an uppercut that sent the mouthy drunk backward so hard that he landed on top of some family’s dinner, on their table. I quickly picked up the half-empty pitcher of beer and flung the contents at Bill the Drunk. I then changed the position of the now empty pitcher of beer so that the side of the pitcher could rudely smack Bill the Drunk up-side his face. I stopped when his hands, one with his beer in it, went up in the universal sign of surrender.
This conflict brought every male employee in the pub into action. The one I assumed to be the manager ordered some of his employees t
o throw the drunks out, and then he turned to us. “What happened here?” he demanded.
I told him and while doing so, I observed and overheard what was most likely the assistant manager apologizing to the family for the drunk falling onto their table. He assured them that they would receive a new pizza, without a drunk topping. When I finished telling the manager what happened, he got huffy and ordered, “Finish your meal and leave.”
“I beg your pardon.” Now it was my turn to get huffy. “Who do you think you’re talking to? We were just unpleasantly confronted by two under-aged drunks in your establishment. Tell me, sir, who sold them their beers? You or I? Who do you think you’re giving attitude to?” Looking a bit shocked, he just walked away. Coming home on her first date, smelling of beer that had splashed off Bill the Drunk might have had something to do with Christina’s parents deciding she was too young for dating and would not be dating again until after she finished high school.
I did not date much in high school. It is hard to develop self-confidence when you have a large number of young gorillas on your back on a daily basis. These young gorillas also hung out around town, not just in school. Later, when these same young gorillas got car keys and I, the vision freak, still used a bicycle, well I just cannot tell you how many times a car full of laughing young gorillas drove me off the road, to their highly vocal, humiliating, delight. These young gorillas usually got their way because we were on school grounds and they were always in numbers. I had to be a “good boy.”
Years later, I discovered traveling by Metro bus. During a trip back from visiting the National Zoo, as we neared the Maryland/D.C. line, the bus was so full that people were already standing. I was sitting near the front so I could keep track of the bus’s progress within the abilities of my weakened eyesight.
At one stop a very pregnant woman who looked ready to pop got on the bus. Being taught to be a gentleman, I asked the woman, “Would you like to sit?”
As I got up, a punk whom I had not noticed standing by, jumped into my vacated seat before the pregnant woman could sit down. I heard him move into my seat more than I saw him. When I looked at him, he smiled like the Cheshire cat, and thought he was sooo cool.
I reached down, grabbed his vest, and in one move yanked him back onto his feet, standing next to me. As I stared at him, daring him to make the wrong move, I said to the pregnant woman, “Would you like to sit down now?” I heard her sink down to the seat as I continued to stare this jerk down. He just melted within my glare like butter on a hot frying pan. Within the tight environment of a public bus, where riders mostly just mind their own business, the strangest thing I have ever witnessed as a rider occurred. About half or more of the riders applauded their approval of what had just taken place. As we came up to the next stop, the punk still under my glare said very politely, “This is my stop. May I get past you?” I stepped to the side. As the punk carefully moved past me, I overheard a woman say, “That’s not his stop. He never gets off anywhere near here.”
As the bus continued, I felt a light tug on my pants, and looked down to see the pregnant woman wanting my attention. “I really needed to sit down and get off my sore feet. I must have done too much today.” With real feeling she added, “Thank you so much.”
Addressing the pregnant lady, I replied, “No problem, ma’am.”
During my junior high and high school years, I was seeing a low vision specialist. It was during these years that I started reporting a growing difficulty seeing moving objects like basketballs, volleyballs, and footballs. The specialist just put it off as oversized blind spots. Don’t get me started on my “oversized blind spots” and my physical education classes during these years. You think guys can be cruel. I still have nightmares of my boy/girl volleyball games in PE.
I graduated in 1974, while the very unpopular Vietnam War was still underway, and so was the draft. My mother took me to the local draft office, where they looked at my medical records, particularly my eye doctor’s reports and without even giving me a physical exam or another additional thought, they handed me my “4-F” draft card and went on to the next person. [4-F classification. unfit for military service]
My mother was so happy that her boy could not be drafted and forced to possibly die for his county that she wanted to go out and celebrate. She could not understand why I did not feel the same. Puzzled by my lack of joy, she said, “Honey, don’t you understand? You can’t be drafted. You don’t have to worry about possibly going to fight a war where you could get hurt, or worse. So why are you looking so down?”
“All my life my peers have been telling me what a retarded freak I am. Now I have an official card from the government, making it official. I AM A FREAK.” For my mother’s sake I left out the word ‘fucking’ that my peers usually had preceding “freak.” Being a card carrying four-eyed freak was not sitting well with me.
Two years after I graduated from high school, the low vision specialist discovered his error in calling my eye problem “oversized blind spots” and sent me to Johns Hopkins for verification. There I spent a long day of eye tests. Some were so painful that (some years later) when they tested my family, my father was amazed that I kept coming back, and my sister passed out during her testing.
At the end of my first day of hard testing, my mother and I ended the day in the head researcher’s office, where the eye specialist looked me over and turned to my mother and announced, “Your son has RP. He is going blind, and it’s all your fault.”
Chapter Two
Going Blind
After a dramatic pause, he continued, “Your son is going blind from Retinitis Pigmentosa or RP. He has black spots or pigmentation forming in the back of his eyes. Eventually the pigmentation will cause all the rods and cones to die, and at that point your son will be totally blind. At this point we don’t know much about RP, except that it is highly hereditary only through the woman’s side, so he must have gotten his RP from you.”
My mother was no fool and she kept her cool, until we got out into the parking lot. Once we were in the car, she put the key into the ignition and sat back. For the first and only time in my life, I witnessed my mother cry. She had just been told her son is going blind and it was all her fault. Can you blame her?
Retinitis Pigmentosa
In the 70’s when I was first diagnosed with RP only two basic facts were known. The first fact was that RP formed dark spots or pigments in the back tissue of the eye (the retinas). Hence the name Retinitis Pigmentosa (Latin for pigmentation of the retinas). How clever. The second fact was that RP ran rampant through the family and was carried only by the females of the family.
Those basic facts were only half-right.
Years later, after many scientific studies and the various RP studies using computers to correlate the data, it was discovered that while many victims of RP had it running strongly through the family, there were many (like me) with no one else losing their sight to RP. Possibly a nonhereditary strain? This brought about theories and conjectures that there are possibly two or more types of RP.
Symptoms.
Night blindness. The inability to see in dim light situations. Night blindness is the earliest sign of RP. [Being night blind does not necessarily mean you have RP. You can be night blind and not have RP.] In my case I was always night blind.
Loss of peripheral vision: Your peripheral vision is your side vision, that vision not in the direct line of sight. In my case, I started noticing a real problem in junior high and high school sports. Large objects like volleyballs and basketballs would disappear from sight before getting to me. At the time, my low vision doctor assumed that it was oversized blind spots, since little was known about RP. Blind spots are areas of the peripheral vision where we don’t have vision. Everyone has a small blind spot in each eye where the nerves go out to the brain. Eventually my low vision specialist could see the pigmentations causing these “oversized blind spots” as he had been calling them for years.
Tunnel vision
: Loss of the peripheral vision causes a tunnel vision effect with the remaining sighted area getting smaller and smaller.
True tunnel vision: With only the use of the central vision and no peripheral vision, someone with RP as if they were looking through a paper towel roll.
Tunnel vision with only light perception in the peripheral vision: the loss of sight is not as bluntly noticeable as in true tunnel vision, but just as visually daunting. I eventually had to start using a white cane because of the combination of tunnel vision and lazy eye muscles, making it impossible to see moving objects or to see while I am moving.
Reverse tunnel vision: The central vision is attacked before the peripheral vision causing the victim to be able to see only with their side vision. While in various RP studies I have met a number of folks with this visual problem.
Vision loss: The end result is total blindness due to loss of all the rods and cones in the retinas.
Treatment: Supplements of Vitamin A and Lutein.
Retina transplants: Various studies are underway that may lead to the replacement of the damaged rods and cones or by implant of a computer chip. The chip would replace the damaged cells.
I was in a study group which was testing the use of virtual glasses. They were hoping that the glasses, worn by a victim of RP, could fool the brain into seeing normally by getting an image to the brain and bypassing the damaged areas of the retinas. The study ended due to funding issues, but was picked up by a computer gaming company to make virtual glasses for computer gamers.
