Day 4~ Softball: Not a Sport For Sissys

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   Welcome back, this is Day 4 of the series of blogs 31 Days of Vision.  I'm glad you could visit with me today, since it is Saturday, I'll not get too deep in the numbers, I'll leave that for another day, but... I will tell you that it is hard not to list the facts and figures when I am talking about vision.
      I've been visually handicapped for most of my life. In one form or another, I have had really bad vision for my whole life, though there are short periods of time that my vision was relatively good, like 20/40, 20/60 corrected. I am lucky, really lucky,  so many people have less vision than I do know that it seems kind of petty of me to complain about it.  For years I hid the problem of my low vision, thinking in my mind it would be better for people to think I was a klutz than to have them know I couldn't see.  I know, right? That is pretty dumb.
     I wore glasses from a pretty young age. I don't know if I was visually impaired before that time, I don't know if it was something that was a sudden, drastic change or if it was something they happened to catch with a school eye exam... I have no point of reference for what I saw and how long I saw it. I do remember seeing stars for the first time. Only the big ones. I could never pick out constellations, I knew what they were, and their names, but for the life of me... I could never pick them out in the sky.
     As a kid, you notice if you are different from other people, not usually because you know that you can't do the same things, but that other people pick it up and point it out to you. When you are a kid, you don't want to be different. You want to fit in with all the other kids... to be popular, or at least not be picked on... ME? I wanted to hide. I didn't want to be noticed. I didn't want to be picked on, to be different, to be me. 
     The ability to see has a lot to do with your self esteem.
Growing up with a visual disability can be very difficult, even if the visual acuity isn't that much of a loss, it is hard to fit into the day to day activities of a normal child.  Glasses get in the way, and if you wear them, kids will say something, no matter how nice they are...they do notice Even a simple statement like, ..."I like your glasses",    can trigger panic and anxiety in the kid that is wearing the pair.

pretty sure mine weren't this cool

     If you are cool, and have cool glasses, you might fit in better, but when I was a kid, I was the only one in class that got glasses. UGH, My mother kind of pushed me towards the ugly black framed ones... I chose pink, but they were horrible. I look back at pictures and they were hideous.  I got picked on from the first day that I wore them. I could see so I didn't mind it so much ...Who am I kidding? I hated it!  I went through glasses in quick succession, my poor parents. I don't know how they kept me in new glasses. I either broke them or had to get new prescriptions a couple of times a year. Sometimes more often. I lost them, I broke them, I hid them. I hated them. I went into contacts when I was 11. Supposedly, they would help slow the changes in my vision. I don't know about that, they had to be changed a couple of times a year, and I just never got that it slowed down the changes. It did help me out socially though. I finally didn't have to wear the glasses. but the contacts had their own problems. We moved to the desert and I had to get used to sand, wind, more sand, and well... more wind. Dry eyes are a norm, scratched cornea are the norm, even if you don't wear contacts. I was miserable for years.

   When I was a kid, I loved to play sports. I was sick a lot, but when I went to school,  I wanted to join in, especially softball. I was the kid that got put in way out left field, where it seemed an eternity before a ball would actually come my way... when it did, I missed it. Totally missed it. Not even close to catching it, missed it. If I wasn't careful, I might get hit with the ball. That was usually when it was up really high and coming straight down, I had a really hard time discerning a ball from a cloud.  I got laughed at, A lot.

     I loved to swim when I was a kid. Of course you can't go in the water with your glasses on. I couldn't find the quarters on the bottom of the pool. I couldn't find my friends. I think my sister used to ditch me a lot, I couldn't see her... had no idea if she was around.  I kind of went into my own little world when I was in the pool.

Not Westmorland, but about the same size!

When I was very young, the city pool was a huge, huge pool that covered an acre, it was called Westmorland. Mom would drop off my sister and me at the pool and let us stay the day... Probably not a good idea. I got sunburned really bad, I don't know how many times. We never wore sunglasses. We never wore sunscreen...I think my sister used Coppertone maybe, but that was the same as using baby oil... which she did use a lot.
     When I was a bit older we went to a Summer camp that had an Olympic sized pool which was cool. I loved swimming back and forth, trying to hold my breath, or swimming to the bottom under the diving boards. Swimming is something that you can lose yourself in, even if you are blind. As long as you have your bearings, you can swim for hours and hours.

This is the Westmorland!

 

     Other sports, not so much. To play soccer, you need to see. Track, you need to see. Basketball, you need to see. Volleyball, Dodgeball, tetherball, yep, they all take vision. I sucked at all those. I found out I was good at canoeing, and gymnastics. I loved the balance beam, and I don't know how I was able to stay on it, I guess just by feel. That is a lot of it, you know? I still feel my way around.
I count steps, I have really good sense of direction. I memorize.

     Kids tend to adapt to what they can do, the physical part is not the hard part, kids figure out ways to get things done. It is the social part that makes people so depressed. There are studies on the socialization of adolescents with visual impairment. Kind of bleak studies, really. Psychosocial problems {1} are at the top of the list when there is a discussion on disabilities. Different types of support are necessary to the development of all adolescents but especially to impaired adolescents it is vital to their psychiatric balance. They are: emotional , instrumental, informational, and appraisal support. Each in it's own way is important.
     Emotional support encompasses the love, trust, empathy that is given to the kid, instrumental is the time, effort and monetary support. Informational is the advice and sharing of ideas and the appraisal support is the feedback that is given to the child. Now, I know this seems normal today... Giving kids the physical and emotional support that is needed to be nurtured... but, well, when I as a kid... I don't know that it was a factor. My mother wavered on feeling sorry for me for being sick all the time,  to wanting me to go outside and play and stay out from underfoot. We were kind of booted out and told to 'suck it up'.
     I don't know that anyone ever gave me council on how to do much of anything. My parents just expected me to be good, go to school, and... well. that was about it. No lectures, no advice, no real emotional support... I was expected to do what all the other kids in school were doing. I was expected to be there, if I wasn't in bed sick, I was expected to go to school, to participate, to come home... and stay out of trouble.
      Maybe I needed counseling, but I think I did OK. I graduated. I wasn't the brightest student, but I wasn't the worst. I didn't excel in anything, but I didn't fail. I went on to college, got married, had a family, did the norm... while a lot of my friends went on to have careers, My mother did push me towards a degree in Nursing... I did the only thing that I could do. I refused to get my license.  I didn't get a good degree, I was happy to not have to stress out all the time, trying to keep up. I I just flat out didn't want to be a nurse.  I wanted a family. I wanted to be lost in the crowd, to not stand out... to be something of a loner really, keeping my family close at hand. I did that. pretty much up until about 6 years ago. Maybe I need counseling now?

     By the way, now they have what is called Beep Ball, A form of baseball for the blind, heck they have teams that actually are better and more exciting that regular baseball, one team is called the Chicago Comets. {2} They are a bunch of grown men that are tough and competitive. They play with a ball that beeps (hence the name) and with two bases that are large kind of punching bags, The pitcher and batter are on the same team. By the way, the pitcher is sighted... he throws the ball hollering Ready, Pitch, and the batter swings at the ball when he hears it near to him.  He runs to whichever base is beeping, if he gets there before the ball is fielded, its a score, if not, he's out.
The game is pretty physical and rough. Not at all what it was like for a girl playing softball back in the day. lolling around in outfield... hiding. Hoping the ball wouldn't come, praying the ball wouldn't come.


1.  Taina Huurre- Psychosocial Development and Social Support Among Adolescents with Visual Impairment-Academic Dissertation,Faculty of Medicine of the university of Tampere. June, 2000. p. 20

2.  http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/September-2011/For-the-Chicago-Comets-Blindness-No-Impediment-to-Tough-Competition/