Age and Disability

I got to thinking again today. Wow, this will be my second time posting in a day. Horray for that. Anyways, that's not the point, the point was I was thinking today. See, my best friend and I went to another friend's place last THursday evening just to hang out, have dinner and listen to some amazingly interesting music. This friend is also blind, like we are and is quite a bit older than us. I'm eighteen and my best friend is seventeen, so while I can give myself permission to do whatever I want, she needs a note from her father in order to go off campus to see this guy. So she gets permission from her dad and we think everything is fine. Then, on Wednesday at lunch, the residence supervisor comes up to us and says "What's the status of tomorrow night?" This was directed at my best friend. She doesn't really understand and says "I'm pretty sure we're still on why?"

"Well your father called last night with some concerns. Come talk to me later." And she leaves. So obviously my best friend is going to be quite upset with her father, since he had called her the night before and not said anything about having called the residence. So at three thirty, she goes and calls her dad, who informs her that, actually, he only called the supervisor in response to a call she had made earlier wishing to address her concerns. This supervisor does not particularly like ou8r older friend for whatever reason. So anyway her dad said things were fine and she was old enough and responsible enough to know if the situation was getting out of hand or unsafe or whatever the concerns were.

Now, there are two things that bug me about this situation. One, the supervisors called her dad behind her back without even saying "Hey we have some concerns, we're going to call your father and express said concerns." They just went ahead and did it. The second thing is the fact that we had to explain to people that age doesn't matter when you're dealing with a lot of disabled people. For sighted people, it's weird for an eighteen year old girl to hang out with a fifty some odd year old guy, but because we all have blindness in common, all of us agree that this is what brings us together. Sure it may sound weird, but to me it makes sense. A lot of my friends that I hang out with who are blind or visually impaired are much older than me, but that does not matter. So it just bugged me and I felt like ranting about it. So that's my lst post today, I think. Good night.