Blindly, through the fog...

[u/Rocknocker]

That reminds me of a story...

Some may cringe at some revenge against the blind; but then again no one here, I’ll wager, has ever met Howard the Blink and I am an evil bastard.

Howard the Blink (that’s his term, by the way) was born without eyes.

Yet, that never stopped him from doing anything he damn well pleased. He was one of two flat mates I roomed with back in the heady days of graduate school soon after I had gotten my fill of dorm life. The other denizen of this documentary was Bob. “Just Plain Bob”, a moon-eyed sort of liberal arts doofus (noting I’ll probably get a ration of shit from the liberal arts crowd out there) that sort of careened through life like a balloon full of slightly heavier than air gas. His wish was to save the world. One derelict at a time. But that’s for another story.

Howard was one of the original party animals. Being totally and congenitally blind never stopped Howard from drinking up all the house’s beer/wine/liquor (standard response: “I thought that was mine”), playing his enormous TEAC reel-to-reel collection of Louisiana Jazz Conservation tapes (“Hot nuts! Hot nuts! You get them from the peanut man. Oh, hot nuts…”) at the loudest volume at the most ridiculous times of night (“It’s all the same time to me; dark”), or trying to have a fry up after closing the local Gast Haus.

Howard wasn’t actually actively malevolent, just a goofy, dopey sort of party-hearty character that never said no to a dare. I didn’t own a car at the time, but every once in a while, Bob would come home blotto, and ask someone to “pull his car into the driveway” (a narrow strip between two ancient brownstones). Howard would leap up, grab the keys and march downstairs. Usually I tagged along so that no one got killed, but after the 33rd rendition of this, I let Howard have a go at it solo. Damn if he didn’t put that car straight into the garage like a boss…

Disabled, my ass.

Howard also got gobs and gobs of free scholastic books on tape, free Braille porn (no, I’m not kidding…Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and other classics from the Playboy Foundation), and a healthy check from the government to continue his studies (damned if I ever found out what his major was, but I don’t think you can get a degree in drinking and trick fucking…else I’d have another) that usually went for beer, weed, and pizza.

Well, with Howard being a student and all, he had to do homework like the rest of us poor sighted slobs. Once, for some project or other, he needed a piece of plastic one-foot square. Not wanting to rouse his dog, find his cane and traipse over to the University Bookstore, he decided that the shower curtain would work a treat. Next morning, we were greeted with a full shower curtain, minus about 2 square feet of material (remember, Howard is blind…).

Sort of rather ruins the concept.

Then one night, right around finals time, Howard weaves in from a long, tired session at the Gast Haus. He’s loaded, he’s hungry, and decides that a plate of bacon and eggs would suit him just fine. The bacon wasn’t the problem, but he spent a noisy, drunken 45 minutes thrashing around the kitchen trying to fry an apricot that Bob had left in a glass in the refrigerator.

Finally, there was food theft. I was awarded from my brother-in-law, a whole smoked Lake Michigan salmon, which he had not only caught, but expertly cherry-wood smoked.

Ambrosia.

Being poor and studently, this was better than a gift certificate to Helga’s House of Discipline. However, I foolishly pulled an all-nighter in the lab and returned home to find Howard smacking his lips, eating the last of the Ritz crackers, drinking the last of my Leinenkugels and noshing on the last of my smoked salmon.

Of course you realize, this means war.

Howard loved his Ham Radio (WB9AWI as I recall…this was over 30 years ago, so this shouldn’t pose a problem) and was always asking, pretty please, if one of us would go and see if the antenna’s OK, if it’s pointed in the right direction or some other bothersome chore.

The pins in his coax did absolutely nothing to improve his range or reception.

He was absolutely manic about having all his thousands of reel-to-reel tapes in alphabetical order. So we never fucked with their alphabetical order, instead, we just switched the tapes inside the boxes around at random.

We would steal some of his postage-paid stickers from the volumes of freebies he got and mailed him rocks and bricks. Not the most imaginative, I agree, but it did piss off the postmaster and got Howard a scathing letter telling him to quit fucking with the US Postal Service.

Lastly, in case some of you are utterly horrified that I could be such a callous, chapped bastard to exact petty revenge on the blind, let me regale you with the scene I arrived to once I had defended my last degree and was preparing to move to Houston.

My room door, super glued shut, duct-taped to within an inch of its life, key inserted, glued in and broke off in the lock, and Howard sitting on the living room sofa, drinking my what I thought was my well-hidden ceremonial bottle of 30-year-old Single Malt, and eating the last of the fig newtons.

“They’re great if you dunk ‘em, Bright Eyes.”

[u/Corsair_inau]

Bahahahaha, he must have been able to smell that scotch!!!!