TURNING A BLIND EYE

All my life I have been blessed with abundant good health and I now realize how smug that has made me. When a crisis hit (detached retina), I was totally unprepared for the helplessness it sparked and the primal fear of blindness it provoked. In the blink of an eye (LOL), I was transported to Boston for emergency surgery and deprived temporarily of simple pleasures such as reading, and writing that are so much a part of my life.
As in all things, there were life lessons to be learned from this experience that I will share with you. Most people respond with great kindness to a sight impaired person who blunders about an enormous medical facility trying to find her way. A wrong turn at the elevator landed me in the basement but a kindly physician bundled me back into the elevator and guided me to the correct floor. The medical staff was surprisingly courteous.My surgeon even asked me to consider using his speciality for a subsequent mystery story. No problem there. Agatha Christie used atropine plenty of times to off her victims and I now have my own supply.
Just an aside– as Nativist sentiments swirl about the political landscape, I note that my surgeon (considered one of the top retinal specialists in the nation) is of Cuban descent. Take that, Mr. T !!
There was a glaring exception to the “kindness of strangers” rule. One nattily dressed geezer in a packed grocery line raised a patrician brow and chided me for touching him with my cart. I considered asking this entitled prig to step outside to settle things (he was at least 25 years my senior and I thought I could take him even with only one good eye)
however, my own good manners prevailed. If I had actually been aiming for his bony ass, believe me he would have known it.