David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published July 9, 2002

Would you rather be blind or deaf?

If you had to be blind or deaf, which one would you choose? I overheard a couple of 10-year-old boys debating that very question recently, and it got me thinking. I suspect the question has been stumping 10-year-olds since the beginning of time -- I remember thinking about it when I was about that age.

For me, it's easy. I'll take blindness for $800, Alex. No hesitation, no second thoughts, no regrets whatsoever. If I must forsake sound or vision, adios sight.

(I'd like to take this moment to proffer a wooden knock to Igotcha, the ancient Greek goddess of cruel and unusual irony. I don't WANT to be blind, she must understand, it's just a hypothetical consideration. If the end of this column is riddled with a sudden rash of typos, it means my baby blues have been struck down. You know how vengeful those ancient Greek goddesses can be.)

My appeasement to Igotcha aside, allow me to explain why I'd go with blindness over deafness. First and foremost, the thought of never again participating in an oral conversation is unimaginable. That would be the worst for me, not to be able to hear what people say.

Sure, folks could communicate via written notes, but that's just not the same. A good conversation is so much more than just words. There's inflection, tone, accent, delivery, enunciation, pronunciation and modulation, all of which combine to create an experience that is far more interesting than simply reading words, regardless of how expertly crafted the sentences are.

For me, the spoken word is far more powerful than the written word. I know that sounds odd coming from a writer, but it's true. I admire great speakers. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech is wonderfully written, but it was his delivery that illuminated the message behind the text. I like Morgan Freeman's voice, too. I could listen to him read the dictionary. Jack Nicholson's good. No one sounds like Jack.

No sound -- that's probably why I've never really enjoyed "chatting" on the Internet. It usually bores me to tears. Instant messages are so cold and sterile. Maybe I'll get interested when video and sound become more prevalent in Internet-based communication, but until then I'd rather just pick up the phone or meet you for a pizza.

And then there's Anna, my little girl. I can't wait to have conversations with her, not to mention Baby No. 2, who's currently in utero. If I could do only one, I'd rather hear Anna than see her.

If I were blind, she could describe her appearance, not that it would make any significant difference to me how she looked. I need the verbal exchange. That's what piques my interest. Looks are, well, skin deep. Looks tell you very little and mean even less, but a few moments of conversation can tell you volumes.

I'd like to derail my train of thought and consider this: Are there blind racists? If so, how do they know who to hate? Do they rely on friends and family members to point out undesirables? The upside would be that you wouldn't have to cut out eye holes in your pillowcase before the big Klan meeting. On the other hand, you might wind up using a yellow pillowcase instead of a white one. Nothing embarrasses a Klansman more than showing up to a cross-burning wearing the wrong color sheet.

OK, let's get back to the blind-deaf issue.

Missing out on conversation would be bad enough, but never hearing music would be crushing. I'd miss reading if I were blind, but I could get audio books. Music, however, exists only in a world of sound. We can remember music and play it over and over again in our heads, but it loses something in the cerebral translation. The passion, precision and power conveyed by live, even recorded, music is irreplaceable. Of all the world's art forms, I'd miss music most of all. Never seeing a master's painting or sculpture would be tragic, but a life without music would be worse. I'll take Rush's "La Villa Strangiato" over Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" any day.

I wasn't able to eavesdrop on the two 10-year-old boys long enough to hear how they would choose. I suspect they'd go with keeping their sight. That's what I would have picked when I was 10. I forget why, exactly. Maybe it's because at that age everything still looks so new -- they've been alive for only a little more than 3,600 days. I've got socks older than that. Also, I'm not sure children that young have learned to listen. They hear, but often they don't listen -- there's a difference. Listening is an acquired skill. I know plenty of adults who hear but don't listen.

It would seem I've managed to escape Igotcha's wrath. Maybe she and I see eye to eye on this.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.