Walking around a store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, sitting on a couch in a beautiful vignette of outdoor furniture, was a large wooden Tic Tac Toe board. It stopped me short, taking my breath away a bit. Most games are no longer possible for me, or if they are, they are difficult and not enjoyable. Scrabble tiles far too small to see. I have talked about jigsaw puzzles in a prior post, “The Puzzle That Is Envy.” Uno cards with their various colors are not discernible to me. Here was a version of an old friend, large enough that I could play. It was startling. When you live your life with a physical impairment, unicorns are not mythical, they are the rare discoveries of a doable, normal, everyday item or activity you lost when your body malfunctioned.
Hundreds of people pass that game in a day without a second thought or look, but I sat down with it, picking it up. I was transfixed. As is my practice when shopping, I used my fingers to trace the X’s and O’s. Many browsers ambled by, but I never looked up. I do not know if anyone wondered why I was so enthralled with this Tic Tac Toe board, but I would not have cared. This moment was between me and my unicorn.
#sisterrain #alittlesightalotofheart #legallyblindwriter #blindnessisaspectrum #opticneuropathy #visuallyimpaired #blind #unicorn #tictactoe #ididntplaybutfeltlikeihadwon
