Follow my Voice

Personal Narrative!
Anna Knox
October 13th, 2010 A3
Personal Narrative
Follow My Voice
I like to think that I trust my best friends, and truly I do. I know they’ll always keep my secrets, and that they’ll be there for me whenever I need them, but sometimes I worry that I’m a not as good a friend to them as they are to me. I’m painfully shy, and I have a hard time connecting to people. When my friends are hurt, I don’t know what to say. When things go bad, I tend to run away rather than fix the problem. But your sight is taken from you and you have a raw, physical dependence on your friend’s voice, things change.
It was supposed to be like any church youth activity, with me sitting in a chair, listening as someone talks at me, but when I saw the teacher hold out the hat, I knew this time would be different. The hat was passed around the room, and when it came to me there were only two yellow slips of paper left. With a sense of foreboding I took a paper in my hand and passed the hat too Sarah, then stared at the yellow paper in my hand. A single, shiny, silver star was on the center of the paper, and though it shined brightly, it seems to suck all the color from the room. I glanced surreptitiously at Sarah’s paper. It was completely blank, just reassuring yellow and wonderfully shiny star-less. I sighed, repeating the quote my dad uses. “The luck of the Irish. Skipped our family.”
“I have the star,” I say resigned to my fate. The teacher very calmly and cheerfully tells me to take off my shoes and socks and out on a blindfold. Then she led my class mates out of the room. I kicked off my shoes and socks, tying the red paisley bandana securely over my eyes. They say that blindness makes all the other sense sharper, and boy, are they right. I felt hyper aware of everything in the room.
The teacher comes back and places her hands on my shoulders, guiding me through the hallways. The she tells me to stop. I stand there, confused and very worried, waiting for further instruction. My teacher explains how there is an obstacle course ahead of me, and that there are dangers on the course, and explains that my friends are going to guide me through this, and I just had to trust them and listen very carefully.
“Anna, lift your left foot, and move it right until I tell you to stop,” I hear Sarah’s familiar voice say. Her voice is the one I’ve heard and on the phone a million times, but I’ve never felt dependent on that sound before. I follow her instructions as best as I can. “Good. Now step up, but be careful. Don’t set your foot down until I tell you.” I can do nothing but listen as she walks me through the first obstacle course, until she passes me off to another friend.
I make my way through five obstacles in this manner, led my peers, until I get to the last obstacle when I hear the familiar voice of Alicia. Once again, I would know the sound of her voice anywhere, but I’m shocked by how much I depend on her voice right now.
“Not there! A little further! Good. Bring your left up until its right next to your foot,” she says. I do as I’m told, my hands shaking and my palms sweating. “You’re done Anna. You can take off the blind fold now,” Alicia says. I take off the blind fold, blinking. I look back over the pathway I’ve come, and I feel my jaw drop.
The hallway is scattered with jacks, thumb tack, screws, nails, branches of rose bushes, and set mouse traps. I can’t help but squeak a little. The teacher had said there would be dangers on the path but I never took her seriously!
Back in the classroom, as I put on my socks and shoes again, my hands shaking with relief, I’m overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude. Alicia and Sarah and my other friends- each had guided me through a mine field that only they could see. They had been careful and thorough, trying hard to keep me safe as I stumbled obliviously through the maze.
It’s easy to say you trust someone. It’s a little harder to trust them with your secrets, and even harder just to trust their voice when you yourself don’t know where to put your feet. I think my teacher had meant this to be an exercise about trust, but that’s not what I learned from I learned about the other side of trust. Responsibility. I had a hard job, true. It’s never easy to trust someone completely, but Sarah and Alicia had a harder job and a greater burden. It was their job to get me through my trials without me getting hurt. They knew that I literally would be helpless without their guidance.
Have you ever held a life in your arms? Had someone completely under your control? I imagine that in a situation like that the responsibility of that would crush you. I’m grateful to the friends and family in my life that guide me, and I hope that I can be a voice to others, guiding them through the mousetraps life sends them.