The Blind Leading The Blind

The intelligence of Labrador dogs is greatly overrated. It's really not that difficult to lead a blind human around. Badger and I had a go at it and it wasn't that hard. As my regular readers will know, my female staff has cataracts and is having trouble seeing how ugly my male staff is. This is a serious problem because she is starting to hear comments from passers-by when they are out together.
 Things like "Cor! Talk about beauty and the beast!" and "Mummy. Why is that nice lady holding hands with a gargoyle?" It's amazing how your other senses like hearing compensate for the loss or diminution of another.

The other day we were all bundled into the Hyundai Getz, Badger and I on the back seat and my staff up front. My staff like to sit in the front of the car as it makes driving the thing easier. We were told we were going to see an eye specialist. Well, my male staff Badger and I were going to see him. My female staff probably wouldn't due to her cataracts. It was about a forty minute drive and Badger and I entertained ourselves by flinging bush chocolate at each other and plaintively crying "Are we there yet?" which I imagine my staff heard as high pitch wheeking because they ignored us.

If this face was wheeking at you from the back seat of your car would you ignore it?

An hour later we arrived at the eye clinic, following numerous diversions, swearing and complaints from my male staff to my female staff that shouts of "Turn Here" are not much good unless she also includes the direction in which he should turn. Serves him right for asking a blind person to navigate I reckon. I may have mentioned this before, but my male staff likes to save wear and tear on the Getz's brakes by gently rolling to a halt against the rear of another car. As well as saving money on brake linings it enables him to meet all sorts of interesting people......and get involved in fisticuffs with them. This time he managed to find quite a new BMW to come to rest against. Evidently the driver was in the car and about to drive off when we arrived and was unreasonably cross when the Getz gentle touched the back of the BMW, leaving the minutest of scratches. The driver strode purposefully towards my male staff, but Badger, my female staff and I didn't have time to watch the altercation because my female staff was late for her appointment. She hitched us up to our harnesses and leads, and we led her into the clinic. There were a few steps, which were tricky and required a bit of scrambling. Eventually we succeeded by having Badger stand on my back at each step and then hauling me up after him. It took about twenty minutes, but my female staff was very patient with us. Finally we made it to the lift and after five or ten minutes of random finger prodding of the wall my female staff managed to find the button to summon it.

Badger's not keen on lifts. You may remember that the last time he was in one he threw up all over an Arab.  The following link will reacquaint you with that affair.
 http://pemery.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/just-desserts.html
The clinic was only on the first floor on this occasion but Badger had already thrown up before the lift doors had had time to close behind us. In a moment or two the lift stopped and we all stepped over the pool of cavy puke into the clinic waiting room. As we were three minutes late for my female staff's appointment we were told by the Margaret Thatcher-esque receptionist (Who had evidently graduated with flying colours from the John McEnroe School of Good Manners) that we would now have to wait for the eye specialist, Doctor Seymour Wrighting to finish his putting practice before he would see us, so we all settled down to chew a few twenty year old National Geographic magazines.

Half an hour later we were still chewing magazines when my male staff arrived looking somewhat dishevelled and had a pronounced limp. Apparently the driver of the BMW had been quite feisty for an octogenarian lady and my male staff had only managed to subdue her by snatching her dentures as she tried to bite him and tossing them into the nearby canal and by snapping her walking stick over his knee. My female staff asked if that was the reason for his limp. It wasn't. Apparently the old lady had kicked him in the testostricles and then he'd slipped on a pool of vomit in the lift. Hence he wasn't in the best of moods.

At long last the doctor came out and invited us all into the office. Standing up and spitting out bits of chewed up magazines we all followed Dr Wrighting and sat down and my female staff was given an eye test.
 "Can you read the top line of letters on the chart on the wall?" Asked the doctor.
 "I can't even see the bloody wall." Replied my female staff.
 "Well you obviously have sight issues." He said as he resumed his putting practice. "Come back in January and will whip out those cataracts. That'll be three hundred and sixty dollars."

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE
Horror of horrors! I trod in my own puke at I was leading my female staff from the lift. I asked the Margaret Thatcher-esque receptionist if she knew of a good foot specialist who could clean them up for me before the trip home. She just looked down her nose at me, understandably, because it's very difficult to look up your own nose.