miss what was currently being said, so I whispered "I'll share my notes with you after class."
"Okay. Thanks."
I tend not to take many notes in social science classes, finding that just listening to the monologue generally gives me enough to compare later with the text but I made a show now of writing with my braille slate so John would surmise I had previous notes to share and therefore stop bugging me.
"If a person spends a significant amount of his income," Mitchell was now saying "to buy a car, he'll tend to see that vehicle as the best car on the road because he's given up a good deal of money to buy it and if he were to entertain a negative view of the car then he'd have to deal with the likelihood that he'd made a poor decision." There was a question from the audience concerning poor performance of said car and how that would affect the buyer's view of his own decision-making ability.
"In the case that the buyer could blame someone else," Mitchell responded. "A salesman, for instance, or a mechanic. His anxiety over having made a poor decision could be alleviated, possibly, because of the fairly poor reputation used car salesmen as well as some mechanics enjoy!" General laughter.
"A University student," Mitchell continued "who undertakes a highly difficult major, one difficult for him or her; will tend to think more highly of the degree if earned eventually; than will someone who has just breezed through college. Again, the effort is proportional to the satisfaction of having achieved the goal. Now returning to the example of the poorly operating car and the blamable used car salesman; we can make an analogy with the successful graduate. If someone takes a degree in say, Aeronautical engineering and enters the job market to find that Boeing is fallen on hard times, would we expect our graduate to blame his choice of a major for lack of job success or would Boeing, perhaps the entire aircraft industry absorb the blame?" So it went for another forty minutes.
"Okay," John said as we began to shuffle toward the exit. "Do you want to go somewhere to review your notes or do you want to call me?"
"I've got to head to the Hub," I said. "I've got a meeting. Can I tell you as we walk down there or do you have some other place to go?"
"No," John said. "That'll work." We proceeded from the quadrangle to the general demarcation between upper and lower campus with me holding John's arm while he scribbled and I recalled the initial points of the lecture.
"You're in McMahon," John said as we neared the throng toward which we'd been tending.
"Yeah," I admitted.
"Me too. Thanks a lot."
"No problem."
I hung around the Drumheller entrance to the Hub; the composite eatery, gamery, social center of the campus. I'd never spent much time here. As an engineering student I preferred one of the departmental lounges but with E.-EDs (electrical engineers) one could never tell! I'd been waiting maybe three minutes when I heard two male voices in conversation accompanied by an occasional cane-tap.
"I think this may be our person here," A voice I didn't recognize hazarded.
"Dave?" A voice I did, queried.
"Hi Gare."
"Dave, meet Lee Wilkins," Gary said.
"Hi Dave." A somewhat damp hand gripped mine. "So," Lee said "shall we go in and grab
some lunch?"
I got two Husky burgers and a Coke and made my way gingerly, trying to manage drink, food and cane while keeping up more or less with our little group. We got outside again and settled around a metal mesh patio table.
"So," Lee said again, "You and Gary know each other obviously, how long?"
"Since seventh grade," Gary said, "but we hadn't met in what about the last eight years? We started talking again about a year ago."
"So you've recently known Dave again, about as long as the two of us have been dialoguing."
"I guess," Gary said.
"Well," Lee said now, "Gary and I are electrical guys, We've got transistors and diodes and all kinds of circuitry. (little laugh.) You're in what, mechanical?"
"Aero and Astro" I corrected, "looking at a BS in bioastronautics."
"Cool," Lee commended. "Gary and I've examining strategies for programming and calculating, that kind of thing, maybe some electronic guidance aids for folks without sight. Does any of that sound like something you might use or want to work on?"
I thought about it. "Well," I said, "as kind of an extra credit project for strength of materials I've designed and built an improved collapsible cane. Here it is," I passed it around so they could examine the sliding joints which locked when the cane was dropped to open out.
"That's pretty keen, Dave," Lee said. "This would fit in with the whole guidance and mobility thing. Are there other projects you have, other things that were maybe suggested by your studies?"
"My main interest is in life support issues," I said. Matter and energy flows, air freshening and water generation processes. The more I get into that though, the more I know I need to have monitoring and control systems."
"I would imagine so," Lee said, "that not really being my specialty but you'd certainly need sensors. Maybe you could collaborate with us on something like skin sensors or transducers to convert reflected infrared light say to something a person could hear or feel? Even if it's not exactly what you want to do ultimately, learning the electronic processing and actuation functions for what you could call the end effectors, would be useful whether you're building a sensor box to help you walk around or something to say, keep CO2 levels within bounds."
"That is an interesting idea," I said because it was and he wasn't talking to me like I was in kindergarten which is an occupational hazard for blind people. "I could come up with a list of processes," I said, "things that I'd anticipate needing to monitor in one of the life support flow charts I've drawn then maybe you guys could give me input on what kinds of circuitry we'd need and we could see if any of that resonates with what you're doing."
"That'd be a good approach," Gary said. "Samewise we could show you some of the stuff we've already developed and other things in the planning stage. Then we could see if you'd like to help us test some of these or possibly use them in one or more of your projects."
We went on like that for perhaps another half hour. "Well Dave," Lee said, slurping from his beverage. "Do you want to throw in with us or do you think we're entirely loony?"
"Both actually," I grinned.
"Works for me," Gary said. "You don't come out of the Braille Jail without being a little crazy. What's your excuse, Lee?"
I showed up early for the second session of news writing class which met for two hours three times a week and awarded a magnanimous four credits. The room was empty. I sat down, acutely conscious as I did so, that I still had on Ellen's underwear. Again my mind raced. I must resolve this thing somehow. I rose again, got myself a stock of copy paper, rolled a sheet into my typewriter.--I'd need it.
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