Hybrid Humans by Harry Parker

Author:Harry Parker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Raging against the Dying of the Light

A few weeks after returning from Germany I meet Jamie for a walk in the park. I see him in the distance, waiting to cross the road. The lights change twice and the cars stop and go, stop and go, and still he doesn’t cross. I want to get there to help him. Then the barman from the pub on the corner is rushing out to guide him.

‘They’ve taken the beeper out of that crossing,’ Jamie tells me as we enter the park. ‘It’s a real nuisance.’

We begin walking, Jamie’s white cane skating across the path. There’s a slight ridge in the centre of the asphalt I imagine he is feeling for. I got to know Jamie soon after I lost my legs; he lives close by. He’d always told me how being blind let him in on the secret of human kindness: ‘People really are bloody kind. That’s what I see – the quiet decency of the British public, who unfailingly offer a helping hand.’

The barman had helped him across, but I’d seen thirty-odd people walk straight past him. Jamie also gets animated about that. ‘It’s the terrorism of political correctness, Harry. People worry they are going to offend me if they ask if I need help. Yes, I don’t actually need help for steps or a kerb – they’re predictable and I can see them with my white cane – but I do need help if I’m about to walk into a huge wire-cage dustbin that’s been parked in the middle of my normal route. That happened, you know. I was covered in blood, and a dog-walker threatened to tie me up with his lead if I didn’t wait for the ambulance. It doesn’t matter if people use the wrong words or offer help when I don’t need it. I know they’re only trying to be kind – and I’m grateful for the thought. It’s those disabled people who, when asked if they are okay, reply, “Yes, are YOU okay?” as if it’s some sort of affront. Can’t they just be thankful that someone is trying to help?’

It was a reminder that I’d been both those people: replying to offers of help with a gracious, ‘I’m okay, thank you’, but also prone to a prickly ‘NO, thank-you’, charged with an unspoken Mind your own fucking business.

Jamie has retinitis pigmentosa, a congenital disease where the cells in the retina at the back of the eye break down and the visual field progressively reduces. When he was twelve he was told that he would be completely blind by nineteen, but it actually took until he was in his forties. ‘I’ve never seen the stars,’ he told me once. ‘As a child I was night-blind and had to feel my way into the house from the garden when all the other children ran back in.’

Hearing this, I felt a surge of pity for him, I suppose because I value sight above all other senses. When I was blown up, my sight was the first thing I checked: Yes, I can still see.

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