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
