By Pat Barrett

(Editor’s Note:  Pat Barrett is vice president of the NFB of Minnesota Metro Chapter and is a member of the NFB of Minnesota board of directors.)

Boise, Idaho, 1973.  It was my sophomore year of high school.  I was walking to school the mile from my house as I did every day.  At that time, though legally blind, I was not using a cane, and had not heard of the National Federation of the Blind.

My mother was not crazy about me walking to school.  During junior high, I had been bused across town with kids of other disabilities.  I could not participate in extracurricular activities, as I wanted.  But my brother, Tony, urged me to go to our neighborhood school, Boise High, to do just that.

Tony and I are close.  Since we were young, we would wrestle together, and watch the same TV shows like “Get Smart” and “The Naked City”.  I had a big crush on Barbara Feldon who played Agent 99.  And, we thought it would be fun to grow up and run away to the naked city, where we assumed no one there wore any clothes.  Even though I was blind, Tony would include me in ski trips with his friends where I would snow tube in the bowl while they skied.  We would go out for pizza.  Our favorites were pepperoni with green peppers (or green moms, as we called them), and anchovy.  I didn’t mind that the anchovies would get stuck in my braces.

On that cloudy and gray spring day, I went to cross the street.  It was a four-way stop.  I looked to the left, but did not look to the right.  I was halfway across, when I could notice with my limited vision a blue shadow coming from the right.

Pow!  I was on the ground.  The car could not have been going more than ten miles an hour.  The driver, whose name was Roberta, stopped her car, got out, and apologized several times for hitting me.  I assured her I was OK, and continued on to school.  She followed me in her car, and again stopped to ask me as I was going into school if I was sure I was all right.  I said again that I was.

Nevertheless, she reported the accident to the office.  They reported it to my mother.  Three weeks later, Mom and I reported to traffic court.

This was the first time I had been to court.  The judge looked to be twenty feet above me on his bench, appearing stern and serious.

“Mr. Barrett,” the judge asked in a deep, intimidating voice.  “What kind of car were you driving?”

My mother cleared her throat nervously.

“Your Honor,” she explained.  “Patrick doesn’t drive.  He is legally blind.”

The judge was taken aback, and was silent for what seemed several minutes.

He then said, “Well, Mr. Barrett, you need to be using a white cane!”

That spring, the itinerant teacher with the Idaho State School for the Deaf and Blind began my cane travel training a couple of times a week for an hour after school.  Though the cane was short and aluminum, and would sometimes fold up in the middle of the street, I found it gave me a new freedom and confidence.  I did not have to look down at the ground all the time.  That was bad for my posture.  The cane could tell me if I was running into something like a table or even a cord on the floor. 

Doing my paper route, (which my (brother had given me in ninth grade), walking to the store several blocks away to pick up the newest Carly Simon album, or still going out with my brother was easier.  One time I remember cruising down Main Street in his blue VW bug, sun roof open, and us singing to “Jesus Christ:  Superstar” on the 8-track tape player at the top of our lungs.

I took my white cane with me on choir trips to southeast Idaho and southwest Oregon.  I wrestled my junior and senior year.  I went out for track in my senior year.

At one out-of-town track meet, I still remember the cinder track feel under my feet, I laid my cane on the grass by where I started.  I took the inner path, and started running the half-mile flat out.  I knew others were passing me, but I was still determined to do my best in one of the last meets of the season.  I finished in 2 minutes, 48 seconds — a record for me.  My team and my coach were proud. 

Before graduation, I earned a handsome college scholarship for my newspaper carrier service for The Idaho Statesman, holding a 3.6 grade average and my lettering in sports.  That summer, I attended the Idaho Commission for the Blind, where I had the liberating opportunity to attend my first National Federation of the Blind convention in Chicago.  Hundreds of people were going out to eat, getting to meetings, and talking about their jobs and raising families with confidence being blind—all with either a long, white cane or dog guide.  Small kids were running about with white canes.  I knew then that blindness did not need to be a wall I had to get around, but that it was simply a part of me, not a problem.

In 1988 and 1989, I had the opportunity to work in St. Louis and teach blind people how to use and travel independently with the long, white cane.  I felt good about passing along what skills I had learned from the skills I had acquired over the years.  In 1993, I attended a more comprehensive training program at Blindness:  Learning in New Dimensions (BLIND), Inc.  There for nine months I learned to go across town and cross streets using the long, white cane, read braille, use the computer, and cook and barbecue.

Today, I go wherever I want with the cane.  My adult daughter and I go on occasional daddy-daughter dates.  I sometimes take my wife, who is also blind, out dancing.  But if I were to meet that judge again, I would vigorously shake his hand, and buy him the most scrumptious steak dinner in town for giving me the sentence that freed me!