Empowerment. Engagement. Authenticity.

Epiphany - Just a Regular Jo

“Wish I could have seen Dale’s face when you dumped that ice water on him!” Callie half-muffled her giggle in her pillow. Our cabin counsellor was a tyrant about no talking after lights out. “You can see faces, can’t you? Was he mad?”

“Uh huh.” In the twin bed across from hers, I tried to imagine seeing only light and dark like Callie did. That’s all I saw through my left eye but I could see faces and objects with the tunnel vision in my right eye. “He had to know it was coming when I asked him to be a fake plant in the skit we did before dinner.”

“Dale sounds conceited,” Callie confided. “I like Joel. Have you heard him play guitar? Amazing.”

“I like James,” I said dreamily. The long day of swimming and canoeing cocooned me in a contented mist. “Can’t wait to go water tubing tomorrow. It was so much fun yesterday.”

“Is this really your first time at summer camp?” Callie asked. “Or just a blind summer camp?”

“Both.” Self-consciousness poked into the mist. I was fifteen. How to explain that no one my age wanted to hang out with me, that I hid in the school bathroom during lunch to avoid their teasing? And, as for other blind people, I’d never met any before this week at Lake Joseph, much less socialized with any. “Lake Jo isn’t what I expected,” I admitted.

“Did you think we just sat around making brooms?” Callie laughed. “You’re from Trinidad, right? My mom says that’s what blind people there do.”

“I didn’t think we’d play tag and run relays. My parents say I can’t run. Well,” I paused, feeling disrespectful for challenging their judgment, “they say I’ll hurt myself if I run or do really active stuff.”

“Yeah, well, that’s stupid,” Callie scoffed, making me giggle loud enough for our counsellor to give our room door a warning rap. “Just because we’re blind doesn’t mean we can’t do regular kid things.”

Was she right? I wondered. True, I’d flipped off the tube in the lake yesterday, and my arms hurt from hauling myself back on, but I was super excited to try tubing again. And, boy, had it felt good to race through the woods playing tag; hadn’t tripped once. The best part was talking about boys. Girls at school did that all the time – I heard them in the hallways and in the bathroom at lunch – but they never included me.

It sure felt awesome to act like a regular teenager...and to be treated like one.

So, if Cqallie was right, what else were my parents wrong about? What else could I do?

 

(c) Kristy Kassie, 2017

 

Epiphany

A character's epiphany - or lightbulb moment - is an effective way to advance the plot of a story.

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