The Blind Girl’s Hurt!
While Bonnie and I were in Chicago, I proudly wore my wraparound black sunglasses everywhere we went. They were plastic and blindingly dark, especially in the dark bars we frequented.
But I didn’t want to take them off. I thought I looked cool. So when I walked into the bar, already drunk, I tripped over the threshold, nearly landing on my face.
Bonnie thought this was hysterical. “It’s like you’re blind!” she shrieked. “Ohmygod you should be blind! Let’s tell everyone you’re blind!”
“But I’m not …”
“No! Be blind! And I’ll lead you around by the arm, you know, like they do with blind people. Here, here, take my arm!”
I took her arm and pretended I couldn’t see. It was an interesting way to enter a bar.
I’m not sure who we were supposed to “tell” about my blindness. We were 400 miles from campus and didn’t know anyone in the place. But I continued to be “blind” with Bonnie helping me onto the bar stool, ordering drinks for me, sliding the drink into my hand every time I wanted a sip. Apparently being blind meant being entirely incapacitated.
It didn’t take long before we were approached by two guys, both our age and adorable. The ruse continued.
Bonnie told them, “She has to feel your face to see what you look like.” And she put my hand on one guy’s cheeks, so I explored his face from hair to chin. Then she moved my hand to the other guy’s face.
I had no idea what I was supposed to “see” from touching them; we had a tough time not laughing through this ridiculous form of greeting.
We chatted with the guys and continued to drink. And drink. And drink.
At one point, I fell completely off my stool. I was so wasted, I simply couldn’t stay upright. I started to laugh; I certainly couldn’t feel any pain.
Bonnie leaped to her feet screaming, “The blind girl’s hurt! The blind girl’s hurt! Get out of the way!”
She helped me to my feet and carefully and quietly led me to the bathroom. When the door shut behind us we fell onto the floor, sprawled in hysterics. We were laughing so hard, it became impossible to do anything but roll around into one another, tears of laughter pouring from our eyes.
I believe this is the moment when someone coined the term “rolling on the floor laughing.”
My black glasses fell off in the hoopla, leading Bonnie to reveal her next brilliant idea. “Ohmygod let’s say that when you hit your head, you regained your eyesight! This stuff happens all the time, right?”
I was crying and laughing too hard to even respond. I started to put my glasses back on.
“No no no no!” Bonnie grabbed the glasses. “Leave them off!”
We walked back into the very dark bar, Bonnie still holding my arm. “It’s a miracle!” she yelled as we made our way through the crowd. “The blind girl can see! Step aside! It’s a miracle!”
We got back to the bar, where we casually climbed back onto our stoools next to the guys, grabbed our drinks and took a few gulps while the guys stared, wide-eyed.
We said nothing.
Finally Bonnie swallowed and turned to the guys, stoic. Then suddenly she said, “When she hit her head, it must have knocked something back into place! She can see now! It’s a miracle! She can see!”
We both started to laugh so hard, I almost fell off my bar stool again.