I had a blind professor, last semester, and I swung through his office to make up an exam. It was a while before I knew he was in there because he was sitting with the lights off. I finally went in, apologized, and took the exam by the light of a nearby window (which was fine). Forty-five minutes into dead silence he panicked and yelled in this booming voiced, “WAIT, YOU CAN SEE!!!” before diving across his desk to turn on the lights. I’m sure he was embarrassed but I thought it was endearing and it highlighted a large aspect of disabled life that I hadn’t previously considered.
Sort of relatedly I once had professor who was deaf, but she had learned to read lips and speak so she could communicate easily with hearing people who didn’t know sign language. One day she had gotten off topic and was talking a little about her personal life, so that one of the students said “Oh, I know, I grew up in Brooklyn too.”
She stared at him for a long time and then said “How do you know I’m from Brooklyn?”
And he said “You have a Brooklyn accent.”
She said “I do?” and the whole class nodded, and then she burst out laughing and said “I had no idea! The school where I learned to speak was in Brooklyn. I learned by moving my mouth and tongue the way my teachers did. So I guess it makes sense that I have their accent, I just never thought about it.”
“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”
now that’s what i call ineffective tumblr discourse! featuring such hits as “why aren’t you talking about this thing you didn’t know about”, “this 3-hour-old post has 20k notes instead of 100k clearly you’re all willfully ignoring it”, “if you don’t reblog this you’re a bad person”, & more manipulative bullshit that only exists to make the person saying it feel holier than thou!
“if you can’t reblog this unfollow me” 0/10, no creativity
“[x people] MUST reblog this” 2/10 I was already going to until you said that
“if you can’t reblog this we can’t be mutuals” 5/10 kinda funny because the person who added that is usually a complete rando. Still probably unfollowing whoever put this on my dash though
“you can reblog this actually” 1/10 no shit, sherlock. Did adding that to the post make you feel good, or something???
“people who like this post but don’t reblog it are all hypocrites looking for woke points” 8/10 extra points for creativity and for actually riling me up. That’s really not how tumblr likes work btw
“look, you’re not obligated to reblog this if you really don’t want to, but think hard about WHY it is you don’t want to” -10000/10 I don’t want to SOLELY because you said that. You ruined a perfectly good post is what you did. Look at it. It’s anxiety-inducing
I will straight up not reblog a post I was going to if someone adds something like this at the end. We don’t guilt trip people here.
tumblr glitch that causes everyones drafts to be published at the same time
This would be like that episode of Malcolm in the middle where Malcolm reads everyone’s secrets over the intercom and no one makes fun of each other but they also don’t make eye contact with each other for the rest of the year
“suffering feels religious if you do it right” no shut up it doesn’t. my friends laughing in the kitchen while i make dinner feels religious. the sun on my face after a long winter feels religious.
somebody in the notes posted this screenshot from the one & only, ursula k le guin. and now i’m screaming wtf
[Image ID: A black and white, hatchmarked sketch of a raccoon standing four-legged in front of the bottom of a long mirror, it is at an angle so we can see the raccoon and the face and head of its reflection. Text below it in a serif-font states ‘I am beautiful.’ End ID]
