Seeing is Believing

You see it all at the Mall around now, the marketing of desire, the headless child mannequins in the store windows, all those grownups pushing and crowding to get the holiday picture…  (Note the body language on this little one in the plaid: a critical shopper even at age four.)It’s enough to make you a Scrooge - that is, until you brush past a man on his way to the rest room and you quick lift your camera and - flash! snap a picture and who does it turn out to be? And instead of flinching/ startling/ frowning, he smiles at you and says “Hey, How’s it goin’?” It’s enough to make you believe in Rudolph. :-)

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Dream Big Today

Christmas Eve and the lady working the counter at Home Goods tells me they haven’t seen any drop-off in sales at all since the downturn and, I mean, obviously, right? Because where else can you find peek-a-boo cutaway nighties made in Thailand AND a boxed set of bar tools that'll pop out every kind of cork known to man including your own bellybutton?As I stood waiting for her to ring up my stuff I noticed  the shopper beside me pull out of her own her cart a massive space-age-style wall hanging made out of super-shiny orange and green wiffle-ball looking things welded together with 50 yards of plastic pipe.“Oh God! it’s cheesy isn’t it?” she blurted when she caught me looking.“No! It’s actually kind of awesome  – unless.... it’s not for your twenty-something son arriving home tonight from Brooklyn is it?”“Hah! No I'm afraid to buy him anything these days I get it wrong so often.No, this is for me,”  she added, looking shyly down at the thing.She didn’t even ask how I knew about her son.You take a couple of weary mums and they can most times see clear down into the other one’s life.

Anyway, I hope you guys out there can also dream on a grand scale so that Santa will also get you something that lifts you clear off the ground like the lady in this picture. (I was foolish when it was my turn at the Mall.  I just asked for this old looseleaf notebook and some Styrofoam full of greasy takeout.

Happy Holidays! Say Ahhh!

JUST IN CASE you were running out of gift ideas there’s a camera for blind people. Maybe this seems funny when you think about the of young Billy Johnson’s visit to his blind dentist but it’s a real thing, even listed in Time Magazine as a nice gift idea for the holidays: “The photographer holds the camera up to his or her forehead and a Braille-like screen on the back makes a raised image of whatever the lens sees,” Time says to which I say WHY NOT? We need all the creative gift-giving we can muster with the malls all getting converted to giant roller skating rinks because nobody's in them.Anyway who doesn’t love a gift that just takes you as it finds you this way? That doesn’t for once assume you’re a whiz at jigsaw puzzles, or force you to pore over 45 minutes of instructions just so you can play some super-hard game of strategy especially designed to lower your self esteem?I received the perfect present two years ago when one my kids gave me this kit so that the National Geographic Society and I could map the genes of all of humanity. Imagine! ME and the National Geographic Society! I would LEARN who my forbears really were - and after of a lifetime of mocking the stuck-up English ancestors on David’s side might find out that instead of being all Irish as my own family so ceaselessly asserted, I am actually part English! Or else maybe a Hapsburg! Or a descendant of Cleopatra, which would explain the bangs!‘Course when someone hands me something while saying the words 'kit' and 'swab' I make it a policy to run in the other direction - which is why the oldest of my kids did it for me after I’d let an entire year go by. She tore open the kit, strode over to me, said, “Mum: Open your mouth,” and sent what she collected from the inside of my cheek to the Geographic Project Lab, which, within three short months came the stunning news that(1) I’m related to every single person Europe and Africa; and2) I’m a girl.So say “Ahhhh!” everyone. Then brush the snow off your car and head for the mall I mean the big old rink. Cue the canned organ music and EV’rybody skate!

Blind Girl, Usin' the Touch Sight Special