It was early.  We found ourselves stumbling on to a shuttle bus near Sea Tac airport around 4am.  Several friends had warned us that you needed to get out there pretty early to avoid the long lines and catch a 6:05am departure.

As we hopped on the bus, I didn’t really pay attention to the other passengers.  Once we were seated, I saw that it appeared to be a father and son.  Without staring, I noticed the boy was holding a stick. It appeared to be a cane.  Oh, that’s sad. A boy around 10-years-old, robbed of his sight, perhaps since birth.  Images that he would never be able to enjoy began parading through my mind: a beautiful girl, a rose, a forest full of trees.  He was acting like he could see, so I tried not to stare at him too much. Maybe he was just legally blind and was able to make out shapes and images.

With his head turned, I read the words on his shirt.  Something about lacrosse.

You guessed it.  He wasn’t blind.  The kid held the stick as if he was blind, but it was really just a lacrosse stick.

When we arrived at the terminal, I let them get off first and gave them lots of time to go ahead of us.  I didn’t want to hear his father, “Dad, that weird guy on the bus was staring at me.”

Tim Hunter