Tag: funny story

Where'd I Leave It Wednesday

The Puzzle of Building a Jigsaw

theblindscribe

Happy Wednesday bookish people! I missed last week’s Where’d I Leave It Wednesday but I’m back! This will probably be a shorter post than usual but I hope you will all still enjoy it.

Today’s story is about the struggle of completing a jigsaw…

I love doing jigsaws. The satisfying clunk as each piece slots into place. Seeing the picture growing because of the work being put into it. It takes up time but I barely notice as the hours pass by. At the moment I have a jigsaw half completed taking up residence on the front room carpet. It’s pride of place, balancing precariously on a green mat that rises in different places like countryside hills have sprung up overnight. The pieces bend and crack over the hills, the tabs are like arms trying to grip to their neighbour or otherwise crumble to the bottom. An avalanche of puzzle pieces with every footstep in the house.

I’m getting close to finishing this puzzle. With a few more days of working it will be completed and the dressmakers shop it depicts will come to life in my living room. It’s 500 pieces taking up the space of 1000 pieces. The puzzle drew me in from the very first web search I did. ‘Extra large jigsaw puzzles’ that’s what I searched. There aren’t many, that’s what I discovered. Even this one saying extra large pieces all over it’s packaging isn’t as large a piece as you’d expect. it’s a constant search for me.. to find puzzles that I can see the pieces of without having to resort to puzzles that have ‘7 and up’ scrawled over the front like a flashing label that says look at me I have to do children’s jigsaws when I’m 22. This doesn’t include Disney, because Disney is for any age and I won’t hear anything against this.

I have a lovely Disney puzzle. I took it down my partner’s Dad’s on Boxing Day last year. Set out every individual piece with a careful precision. Took in each and every colour and distinguishing feature. The edges were built, an elegant frame. Then the inside was filled, piece by piece, I put in what I thought was the final piece. Wonderful, I sat back to take in what we had completed. Then I noticed, there was a piece missing. I looked everywhere for it, it wasn’t in the bed or on the floor.. no, my partner had it. He had taken it at some point during the day and kept it hidden from me so that he could put the last piece into the puzzle. Then he looked at me and said ‘I win’. I still contest this.

That’s it for today’s story, I hope you all enjoyed it!

Where'd I Leave It Wednesday

Where’d I Leave It Wednesday: The Turquoise Zebra

theblindscribe

Happy Wednesday bookish people! It’s Wednesday which means it’s time for another Where’d I Leave It Wednesday! I’ve decided to stick with a similar way of writing as last week’s story, let me know what you think!

Today’s story is all about swimming, of course when I go swimming (it’s rare) I have to leave my cane and glasses in the changing room… the world looks very strange without them..

On to the story!

It wasn’t blue, not completely but a turquoise colour. A turquoise with diagonal stripes of deep blue, like a turquoise and blue zebra had melted on the floor and left a puddle. An extremely deep puddle. That strangers will float around in like human versions of ducks in a bath. Usually wearing ridiculous things like bikini tops with no straps. Even though water is like a stronger version of gravity to those things. That is how I see a swimming pool – a swirling, whirling pit of green and blue merging together. I imagine jumping in would feel like catapulting myself into it’s wide open mouth. Of course, I only imagine it, I would never be stupid enough to actually jump in. Maybe one day an overzealous scientist who believes they will change the life of someone like me, for the price of a classical painting that is, will invent eyewear that stops a pool from drowning your eyes in salt at the same time as allowing me to stop imagining melted zebras at the local sports centre. Like a Gucci version of goggles. How fancy. The envy of every blind person. Until then I just can’t visit any zoos.
            Swimming and I, we’ve never gotten along too well. From the first time I waded into the blurry expanse of the pool. And by that, I mean ‘gently’ guided in by a teacher after having a tantrum, worse than a toddler told no in a supermarket, before I’d even left the changing area. I shrieked, I cried, I ended up in the water anyway. Clinging to one of those coloured pool noodles made of foam like it was the last remaining lifeboat on the Titanic. Our relationship only got worse from there. A tumultuous relationship that most recently led to an embarrassing moment with a toddler. It wasn’t even my child. When my sister asked me to go swimming with her and her friend, I didn’t realise we would be bringing along the crazed energy that is her five-year-old son. Generally, I love children. Having an uncensored, often brutally honest, conversation with them can be refreshing. But her son could make the most pious nun renounce God and never go to church again if it meant getting away from him. As soon as he clambered into his car seat with yellow armbands on, that could have fit an elephant, I knew that day was not going to be as simple as just swimming in water I couldn’t see. The armbands absorbed the top of his arms like the sleeves of a 1980s wedding dress. Each time he moved they knocked against each other and created a long drawn out squealing noise. If I had any pins in my hair, I would have used one to pop them. Oh dear, he wouldn’t have been able to go swimming. What a shame. Unfortunately I didn’t have anything so her son did end up swimming with us. By us I mean me, considering his mother disappeared to the opposite end of the pool with my sister as soon as we entered. They stayed in the deep end of the pool, swimming around like sharks drunk off mischief. Being short and well, blind, I went no further than the water skimming my hips which meant being an unwilling babysitter. He even began calling me Auntie. I am not his Auntie; he has one who lives in Wales. If I was an Auntie, and my sister had somehow reproduced, I would definitely not take them swimming. I would also make sure their parent was in close proximity so that I could hand them back quickly. I couldn’t do that when his mum was down the other end of the pool.
            I thought that perhaps he would be bored or scared after being in the pool for an extended amount of time but instead he was taking large jumps, as large as he could with toddler sized legs suspended in water. He made for an ungraceful ballerina. It was during one of these leaps that one of his curled-up feet caught on the mottled texture at the bottom of the pool. His face barely had time to crease in anticipation of a complaint before it smacked into the water and disappeared beneath the turquoise. The speed of which he fell pushed his bottom half to the floor of the pool and he bounced there for a moment. The sound echoed around and reached his mother but I had already reached under and pulled his head back out of the water. She stayed at the other end of the pool. Water cascaded down his forehead and dribbled from his chin. His eyes were squeezed shut. I was already preparing for his next move; he might begin to cry or he might make a dash for the stairs to exit the pool. Not that I would have minded had he wanted to vacate the pool as fast as possible. I thought there had been enough adrenaline for one day. Neither option was what he did. His little hands bunched up around his waist and before I had time to ask if he was okay, he pulled his swimming trunks down and let them inflate in the water. He stood there proudly naked in a public swimming pool and said “kiss it better Auntie”. I don’t think so.

That’s it for today’s story, I hope you all enjoyed it!

Where'd I Leave It Wednesday

The Stick in the Stall

theblindscribe

Hello bookish people! Happy ‘where’d I leave it Wednesday’ I hope everyone is having a good day. My day consists of doing a load of work for one of the assessments on my Masters course and not being allowed to go into the kitchen all day. This isn’t just a weird thing with my family that on certain days we aren’t allowed in the kitchen – it’s my birthday tomorrow and always the day before my Mum and my Sister make me a birthday cake so I’m banned from going anywhere that I could get a sneak peek of it.

So for today’s post I’m going to be telling you about the time that I left my cane in a public bathroom stall.. the first time.

It was a Monday, yes I remember the day this was a very embarrassing moment, and it was in between my two University classes. Sometimes I get free time between my classes but it isn’t enough time to get on a bus and go home because by the time I got there I’d have to get on another bus to come back. So I would go into the shopping centre and just walk around (and buy books in Waterstones but we will just ignore that because I literally have no self control) and obviously at some point I would end up having to use the bathroom.

It was all fine until I exited the stall, another woman was waiting – fine, she rushed in before I’d properly been able to move out of her way – a bit rude but fine, I washed my hands and left the bathroom. It is really weird that I can’t safely walk around very well without my cane but it takes me a very long time to realise I don’t have my cane. Oh goodness I’ve just had a thought, I probably still hold my arm out and move it side to side in front of me as if I’m carrying my cane even at times that I’ve left it somewhere… okay, that’s very likely. And very embarrassing.

Going back to the embarrassing moment I was originally talking about – I left the bathroom and got a few steps before I remembered that I’d left my cane in the stall, I lean it in the corner where the door hinges are because my cane laid down on the floor tends to stick out under the stall door and people have fallen over it before.. so I had to go back for it. It is very awkward having to suddenly turn around and walk back into a bathroom you have just left, and it’s even more awkward when you have to bypass all the available, open, people free stalls, and knock on the shut door of the only stall that is currently occupied.

The woman who rushed past me earlier was still in there and we had a very short conversation. I knocked, she said hello, I said I’m sorry but I think I left my white cane in this stall and I need it back as soon as possible. She, thankfully, said okay and started trying to get my cane to fit under the door. The gap under the door is not big enough for my cane, that is currently unfolded and over a metre long of thick white fibreglass. There’s probably a permanent dent on the bottom of that door now… anyway, she couldn’t get it under the door that way so I had to tell her through the door that she needed to collapse the cane first.

Explaining to a stranger, who is currently still using the toilet, that they need to fold your cane into three parts, tie the string around it and over the top and then slide it across the floor to me is very difficult. The cane itself is really stiff to make the parts fold up and it meant that some interesting noises were exiting the stall while she did what I said. I have talked to friends through bathroom stalls before, and my family, but this was my first time talking to a stranger through a bathroom stall. Since then this has happened multiple times but let’s just pretend that it hasn’t. So she folded it up and slid it out to me and I practically ran from that bathroom. I later saw her again but we both made sure that we avoided eye contact.

And that’s my story for today! I hope you all enjoyed it! Has anything embarrassing or anything like this ever happened to anyone else before?