To the Editor:

Nearly 50 years ago when I was a sophomore at Farmington (UMF), I was invited to join a classmate and her out-of-town friend on a trip to Farmington Fair. It was the last day of the fair, a Saturday. The weather was pleasant and the fairgrounds were within walking distance of the fairgrounds.

There was only one problem; both of the girls were visually handicapped. My classmate couldn’t take her Guiding Eye dog to the fair. It wasn’t because the dog was a dog, but because it wasn’t trained to guide her owner around the confusion of the crowds on the fairgrounds. And neither girl could use her white cane to guide herself around the fairgrounds. Solution? They both needed a sighted guide each.

And this is where I came in. My classmate invited me to go along as one of the two sighted guides and did I mind, she asked, if she invited a guy she knew to be the other sighted guide? Even though I had never met this fellow I said that it was okay by me.

To make a long story short, the four of us had a wonderful time at the fair. We ended up at the racetrack, mostly because it started to rain and the grandstand provided shelter from the downpour.

After the fair I began to see more and more of the other sighted guide and I discovered that we had many interests in common. Of course we were both students. Neither one of us could afford to spend money on non-essentials such as dinner in a local restaurant. Instead, we bought a pan at the local Reny’s (still have the pan), a can of beans, a package of hotdogs and prepared a simple, New England, Saturday night supper in my dorm kitchen.

At Christmas time, instead of buying a card, I made one and added a poem of my own inside. (See below) He gave me a diamond ring.

Decades later I’ve long lost touch with my former classmate and her friend, but I’ve been married to the guy who acted as the second sighted guide for over 46 years. Who says love isn’t blind.

Sheila N. Giffin

Wilton

 

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