First and foremost you should listen to The Universe and then read the Critical Scholarly Analysis of The Universe by Wally Sailorman. This is a true Flatologist's handywork. This is not his real name of course because if the faculty and student's at the University where he works found out their beloved and revered Professor of Mathematics was THIS knowledgical they would realize his highest goal is to be Flat Broke and then they would stop paying him in order not to offend, unwittingly cutting off the funding for his honey-as-hemmoroid-ointment studies. This will not do. So in the interest of science and sticky buns we affectionately call him FLATULATOR. Or....... Wally.

There I was, earlier this evening, minding my own business when at around 9:30pm I heard some commotion outside my window. The nearby University regularly produces wave upon wave of drunken freshman stumbling home from the bars, so shouts of "hey fucker, wait up" and muffled vomiting noises are a common part of the apartment's ambience. But the racket reaching my ears on this night had an urgency to it that caught my attention.

My living room window looks out onto the street and affords me the opportunity to satisfy my habit of people-watching, so I recognized the man standing there in the dark with his bobbing head and cane. On many previous occasions I found myself watching him make his way from one end of my window's view to the other, feeling his way down the sidewalk with his cane. I would try to imagine what it must be like to be blind and have to make it through this already murderous world with the added sinister twist of walking the mine field with your eyes closed. Well, someone must have heard my contemplations and decided the time had come for my ignorance to get slapped right out of my head.

As I opened the window I heard the man yelling at the top of his lungs, "Help! Why won't someone help me? I'm lost!" and then I heard him mutter under his breath, "What's going on? Why won't anyone help me?" He sounded desperate and scared. I knew the answer to his question but I didn't think of it until later; it was spring break so the town was deserted and the weather was cold and grey so the people who were still in town were locked up tight inside their apartments with their TV's on too loud and the windows shut. That's why no one heard him.

So I went out to see what I could do for him. As I approached I asked if I could help. He was a giant of a man in his mid-thirties sweating in a giant winter coat. He was completely out of breath and his head bobbed violently and incessantly. Snot was running out his nose and onto his upper lip. He was so upset that he didn't even notice. I know this because later on, after he had had a chance to calm down, he pulled a well used handkerchief out of his pocket in a gesture of habit, and blew his nose.
When he heard my voice he immediately turned to me and asked "Where am I? Is this Linn Street? I was walking home from the store and took a wrong turn. Am I facing east right now because I think Burlington Street is that way? Is that right? Do you live around here? I don't know why no one came to help me. I just got lost and I don't know which way I came from now. First I was on Gilbert and going north and then… Isn't there a bridge right there that connects to a sidewalk that leads around to Church Street and then over that, past the tire store to Burlington? Do you live around here?"

The combination of the fear radiating from him, the snot, the head bobbing, the loudness of his voice, and the speed at which he barraged me with questions, slowly began to rip my brain apart. One side of my brain was trying to process the reality of his existence on a grander scale while my practical side was trying to assess the situation, narrow down the problem, and come up with the most pressing matter and its resolution to make sure I did right by my new companion. Was he of sound body and mind so as to continue his journey alone after being orientated? Was he really coming home from the store or was someone somewhere calling the police and filing a missing person's report?

My first reaction was to try to answer each and every one of his questions as they shot from his mouth. I determined fairly quickly that he all he needed was to regain his sense of direction although the thought of possibly calling a cab or the police to help him get home was still an option in the back of my mind. I realized later that as I frantically tried to manage the situation and make sure I would take good care of my new charge, he was already on to the next step and had been in control of the situation as soon I uttered the words, "You are facing north on Linn Street about to cross Church…"
He asked me if I lived nearby and if it would be ok if he used my bathroom. The guy in my brain I call The Fun-hater (and who calls himself Irrational Action-hater) was saying things like; "Is this a good idea? What are you getting yourself into? Stranger Danger!" I quickly hit my well worn over-ride switch and took the man by the arm and we began to head across the street to my apartment. I was feeling adventurous and either this guy had my number from the get go, or maybe the ache in his bowels had just made him more trusting than usual.

As we crossed the street he continued to barrage me with questions. "How high is the bridge down the street off the water? Is there a big curb off the sidewalk on the northeast corner of Prentiss and Linn? How many feet is it to Burlington and does it go up hill on this side of the street and downhill after you cross Burlington?" Mind you, I had been walking these same streets two to four times daily back and forth to class for two years and didn't have a clue. Here I am stuttering and bumbling around trying to answer some simple questions about the terrain I had been walking around on constantly. And I had two working eyeballs. Was it all wasted on me? Was the world he was walking around in far more detailed than mine? Was I an idiot? Yes.
But let's not get carried away peering into this guy's reality with rose colored glasses. Here he was being lead into a strange apartment in a city filled with as many weirdoes and psychos as any American city, he was visibly upset and disoriented, and what else? Let's see… Oh yeah, he can't see and didn't know me from Adam. It scared the shit out of ME!

I don't have kids and I don't have any blind friends or relatives and though you want to treat everyone equally, there are certain things you have to do differently when dealing with different people, such as, children, musicians, the blind, etc. This always catches me off guard. Like when my sister said she was stopping by for the first time with my one month old nephew. I thought 'how cool is this?!' Then I realized as they were walking up the stairs that there were sharp objects laying everywhere, deadly cleaning agents within reach, and there was a complete absence of toys or juice or anything even fun or safe to chew on. The same feeling of dread crept over me as I lead my friend up the stairs to my apartment so he could relieve himself. It was only a matter of time before my dumb ass would do something stupid or forget about some accommodation anyone with a brain would think of. Nothing like a strange situation kicked up a notch with a little dash of awkward. He probably would have laughed his ass of if he could have heard my thoughts but he was busy asking me questions about my everyday surroundings I couldn't answer.

My fears were validated after I had done my best to lead him into the tiny bathroom and help him out of his coat, guided his hand to find the toilet itself and the sink, answer his questions about where the shower was and that he would be facing east while crapping. As I shut the door and sat down on the couch in a daze, he yelled out from the bathroom to remind me that I had forgotten to show him where the toilet paper dispenser was. After showing him where he could find the toilet paper and sitting down on the couch again, my mind raced ahead to anticipate his next question and concern but my thoughts were cut short.

I was again overwhelmed by this guy's situation. The comfort of my existence lay wrapped around me like a mantle of insulation against the brutal world out there. How silly it seemed to me all the times I had lamented my cozy lifestyle. Poor me. I had to walk down two flights of stairs to do my laundry in a community washing machine. Poor me. I had to pay such outrageous prices for parking my truck downtown four blocks away. And just as I thought I was truly feeling the brutality of having to crap in some stranger's bathroom lost in some dark corner of a labyrinth of a city, I heard an intense and loud conversation issuing forth from the bathroom.

"I'm tired of you treating me like livestock. With all these predators out here after me, like I'm some kind of prey. I DON"T CARE! I'm sick of it and you don't know how it feels. GODAMMIT! This isn't fair. Herding me around in this cage like cattle. I don't know what he thinks. This is bullshit!"

At this point I was watching this whole event unfold from outside my body, floating above myself wide-eyed, and in quite a state of shock. Was he talking to me? Was he talking to God? Was he a reluctant angel sent on a bullshit mission to violently readjust the reality of some inconsequential college kid? Was he completely wacko? I smoked an entire cigarette while sitting on the couch waiting for him to finish.

This could have been the end of him. That wrong turn he took could have been his last. Here he was completely at my mercy, pants around his ankles, disoriented, and in a stranger's home. For all he knew I could have been a lonely telemarketer with a perverse fascination with Japanese fillet knives and an itch to try them on human flesh. He had no idea who or what else was in the apartment with him. Then again, I could have been the love of his life sitting there on the couch trying to think of a way to express my undying love for him. He could have walked into the arms of a mad killer or a passionate lover, but all he did was take a good long crap in an inconsequential college kid's bathroom.

Was I insulting the ability of his other senses? Could it be that he could judge a person without seeing them just as well as a seeing person could? God knows I have been a bad judge of character before. I had so many questions for him.
At some point I was stirred from my ruminations by him trying to unlock the door and get out of the bathroom. I jumped up and talked him through unlocking it. Then, to continue the attack on the foundations of my reality and senses, the door opened, wafting a cloud of unbelievably potent stench over me.

After helping him back into his coat we left my apartment and I started guiding him down the flight of stairs. He asked me if I had cable television. I didn't hear myself answer because he stopped short, teetering on the stairs, let go of the railing, and clapped once really loudly, and then asked me how old the building was and continued on down the stairs. I don't remember what I said because I was totally thrown off by the ear splitting clap. It kind of felt like a 'Praise God, the kid's got cable' clap but later I realized it was probably more of a 'How big is this stairwell/sonar' kind of clap. It was a little hard to untangle his meaningful gestures from all the head-bobbing and the random noises he would make with his mouth that corresponded to a little kick of his left leg.

When we reached the sidewalk I told him I would walk him to the corner if he wanted. He accepted and immediately asked me how old I was and what year I was in school, and where I was born, and how many people lived in my apartment, and what I was studying. The Fun-hater appeared again briefly but quickly realized he was just getting a better 'look' at me. And at that moment I also realized that even though I couldn't answer a lot of his most basic questions, all the answers I had given him would undoubtedly be tucked away forever in a corner of his mind, filed neatly under "Dumbass with small bathroom."
This whole adventure of mine wouldn't even be a blip on someone else's radar if they had grown up with or been exposed to this type of handicap at another point in their lives. But me? I got sideswiped and mowed over. I got a crash course in something many people don't bat an eyelash at because of their proximity to it, and believe me, the impact left me breathless. Was I making too big a deal of it? Does that make me an idiot? Do I not need any help in that department anyway, thank you very much? Is a red face and a feeling of awkwardness just a symptom of a good case of learning-something-itis? Do I disrespect him by standing in awe of his courage? Or did I just finally cement the respect I had for someone - who used to be a stranger walking by my window - as he spackled the inside of my commode and my heart? My respect for the entire human race and what they must endure on an everyday basis was great, and now was even greater as I watched him waddle off into the night. Sometimes reality comes a-calling, and sometimes it stinks up your bathroom.

If there is a moral to the story, perhaps it is this, Earthlings…

Open your bathroom and your heart to the world and you will find yourself scared shitless, yet flushed with happiness in the end, for it is only experience itself that can truly purge the constipation of the mind.

There is much to be learned if you listen closely and contemplate:
The sound of one blind crapping.