Q: Can you cook?
A: As much as it would make sense to start with a different question, this is invariably one of the first questions I ever get asked after people find out I’m legally blind. This first and then, something like what on earth does it mean to be legally blind? Since this question weirdly comes first, I will cover the question on legal blindness in the next part.
Getting back to the real question now I suppose the cooking question comes up first because food is a very important part of a person’s ability to continue on living. Anyway, the short answer is, yes I can cook. Even if I was totally blind, I’d find a way to make that happen. There are always ways to make that happen. I don’t just sit around starving to death waiting for someone to help me. That would just be silly. Sure, there are things that anyone needs help with from time to time, but the general goal has always been to be more or less as independent as anyone else, and not to be a burden.