[Critique Group 1] Submission for March 2023 critique for group 1

[Deanna Noriega]

910 words

At your Service

By DeAnna Quietwater Noriega

 

When I was a college student, my best friend Annie and I took a bus to San
Francisco to Christmas shop. We decided to take a lunch break at a cafeteria
style venue. Annie scanned the restaurant for an empty table. She directed
me to one near the buffet line. I settled my guide dog beneath it, clipped
her leash to one of its legs and placed my bags between her front paws. We
hurried to fill our trays, observed by a busboy clearing dirty dishes. When
we had made our selections and were trying to decide how to carry two trays
back to our seats; the bus boy stepped up and bowed, offered me an elbow,
"At your service Miss," he quipped. Scooping up my tray, he escorted me back
to my seat with a smile.

 

Throughout my life journey, I have met many wonderful strangers who seem to
take real enjoyment in offering me assistance. Yesterday, I was in Jefferson
City helping with the Missouri Council of the Blind present their views on
two pending pieces of legislation. I had been assigned my own state senator
and seven members of the Missouri representatives on the house side. I
helped my roommate, a woman five years older than I get up, dress and attend
the breakfast before going over to the state capital building. She was given
two state senators and five members of the house to visit. She hadn't made
any appointments. I noticed that her house members were in offices with room
numbers followed by letter designations. Since these indicated to me that
these might be up narrow steep metal staircases to mezzanines built in large
high-ceilinged rooms, I offered her a trade for some of my list to reduce
her list to five visits and adding two more to my list. She agreed, but when
she was ready to leave, she changed her mind and asked if I could do them
all. She felt unwell. After I arranged a late check-out, I was trying to
touch type the address of my hotel into the proper field in my phone to
summon an Uber car. An acquaintance's husband recognized me and asked what I
was doing. When he heard, I was trying to setup a ride to the capital, he
offered to take me and my dog with the two blind people he was driving
there. Robert had never been part of a legislative day. Since he needed to
find a place on the street to park his extended cab pickup truck. He dropped
me in what he thought was the back entrance where I could have taken an
elevator to the offices level. I took the elevator to the third floor to
begin looking for offices, only to find myself still in a parking garage,
not the capital building. I heard a car looking for a parking spot and
followed it. When the young man driving the car stopped and rolled down a
window, I explained I was lost. He took me to another elevator and we
crossed the street where I met up with My friend Robert and his party and
were given directions to a public access entrance. 

 

We got separated when we got tangled up in a large gathering of children's
advocates holding a rally in the rotunda. A woman admired my dog and asked
if I wanted a seat, but when she understood I needed to locate an exit into
a main hall, she led me to one and even figured which direction I needed to
go to reach my first appointment. There I met a legislative assistant who
used to work for my house representative. She told me he was planning to run
for the senate next fall and insisted on walking with us to my second
appointment. Each subsequent office had someone willing to guide me to the
next. I only got to talk with two legislators because the senate had done an
all-night session and had only broken at seven in the morning. They had all
left to get some sleep. Both house members were supportive of my positions.
I managed to finish dropping off material in all 15 of the legislator's
offices on our combined lists by 11:30. At the last office, I asked the
legislative assistant if she could direct me to the elevator that would take
me to the basement level so I could walk out to the street through the
parking garage I had originally meant to walk through under the capital. She
said she really couldn't because she was directionally challenged and her
directions were likely to get me lost. Instead, she walked with me, waited
for the elevator and escorted Flynn and I through the garage. She met a
friend and stopped to talk to him when I ran into Robert and his party who
were going to take a lunchbreak at a nearby restaurant. They offered to give
me a lift back to the hotel. 

 

When I was young, I hated having people assume that that sweet little blind
girl needed someone to take care of her. Now that I am transformed into that
sweet little blind grandma, I am grateful when generous minded people go out
of their way to offer help. As for Karen, the directionally challenged
legislative assistant, she remembered me from previous visits to the capital
to meet with my senator. 

 

 

DeAnna Quietwater Noriega

Cell: 573-544-3511

Email:  <mailto:dqnoriega at gmail.com> dqnoriega at gmail.com

Author of Fifty Years of Walking with Friends

https://www.dldbooks.com/dqnoriega/

 

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