Bright eyes
Sitting still in a make-up chair for four hours can be surprisingly exhausting. I was falling asleep over dinner ...
On my way to being a model for a make-up student today, I encountered an unusual scene in the subway. A woman on the opposite platform was walking her dog right up to the edge, then dragging the beast around the edge such that one of his hind legs dangled in the empty air for about half a minute, and then she would walk him back to safety.
I watched her go through the entire routine again, and as I was witnessing it for a third time, a woman appearing beside me exclaimed, "Oh my god!" and clapped her hand dramatically over her mouth. "It's nothing to be worried about," I said, and proceeded to explain that the woman on the other platform was simply training a guide dog. He wasn't learning very quickly - he was supposed to obstruct the path of the trainer before she gets too close to the edge, but he really wasn't getting the idea.
Presently, the benches around me filled up with people, and about ten of us watched the trainer and her dog repeat the routine, over and over, mesmerised. Again, I had to explain to someone else that it was nothing to worry about, feeling somewhat awkward at having found myself in an unwilling position of relative superiority because I was able to decipher what was going on.
I guess something positive came out of working very close to the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind for two years. Whilst I have been aware for a while now that the common understanding of issues relating to disabilities is very poor - this transcends to Web accessibility - today's curious little episode left me somewhat disheartened.
Posted by sniffles at November 26, 2002 11:43 PM