The Blind Leading The Blind:

So, this Saturday i spent my time at the West campus of our local junior college. I had been asked about a month ago if i was available to work that day, teaching kung fu and self defense to blind kids and i was like, sure, why not?

We had about 12 kids in our room, each with varying degrees of sight or in the case of a couple of kids, had lost both their sight and their hearing. We did the whole gamut; warm up, punches and kicks and then we really focused on self defense. My main parts were the stretching and then the verbal defense. My goal was to get them used to raising their voice so they would be heard. I've found that a lot of young girls and even women are afraid to raise their voice - even if they're in an emergency situation. Something to do with society's belief that women are supposed to be soft spoken and never raise their voice - but that's an entirely different soap box for an entirely different day...

During the break we sat around, munching on fruit, talking about what their favorite movies were, whether or not they read in braille, what their favorite foods were and, the most interesting to me, what their favorite colour was. Every single one of those kids had a favorite colour. One young lady, who was born completely blind i believe, said her favourite colour was red. How does she experience red? Some of them said that they don't watch movies per se but they do listen to them, which i can understand and another - the girl whose favourite colour is red - said that she's read all the Harry Potter books (except the newest one) in braille. Dude.

I think my favorite part was when i escorted them to the restroom and overheard them in there:

A1: "What are we doing?"

A2: "I don't know."

A1: "Where's the towel dispenser?"

A2: "Go foward and a little to your left."

A1: "Man, it's like the blind leading the blind in here..."

A2: "Ha! That's cause it is!" and they just busted out laughing.

We talked to the director of the program and she wants us to do more with her; here in town, and then several out of town gigs too. This time, when asked if i was interested i didn't say "sure, why not?" i jumped at the chance.