Congratulations Blind Pilot!

Our society loves to tell people what it can’t do. Women can’t vote. Drunks can’t drive. And blind people can’t fly planes.

Well you know what? Society can go fuck itself, and you aren’t afraid to tell it so. Today you’re going to give society the biggest, baddest middle finger you can manage by popping up the double birds and enrolling in flight school.

“A blind person probably shouldn’t fly a plane, right?” the secretary will say to the flight instructor sitting next to her, essentially ignoring you. He’ll shrug in response.

“Robuts pretty much do it for us at this point, to be honest,” he’ll respond, removing a handful of chaw from his mouth and slamming it into a garbage can by his knee.

“I can do whatever a sighted person can do!” you’ll shout, facing away from both of them.

“Can you pass a colorblindness test?” the secretary will ask, holding up a card showing a set of multicolored dots arranged to show a letter “E.”

“WITHIN REASON!” you’ll shout-ply, still facing away from her.

She’ll open her mouth to speak (not that you’ll be able to see this) but before she can get a word out the old flight instructor will stand up, cram a fresh handful of chaw into his mouth and loudly declare:

“Shiiiiiii… I’ll teachur.”

Tears will begin to flow from your sightless eyes. “I won’t let you down, sky-coach!” you’ll shout, still facing away from the flight instructor and the secretary. But that won’t rattle the flight instructor none. He’ll step around until he’s facing you and smile real big so you can feel it when he takes your hand and puts it on his face.

“Reckun the skies’r big ‘nuff fer a lil’ creative flyin’.” He’ll pat you on the shoulder while you awkwardly grope at his face, then put a cigar in his mouth and light it, all the while still chawing up a storm. He’ll blow a big cloud of smoke in your face before he speaks. “Mah daughtur, she’s blind. Folk’r tellin’ her she can’t fly. I aim t’prove ‘em wrong.”

Then he’ll dramatically put the cigar out (you won’t be able to see this, remember) and sit down to help you fill out all your paperwork correctly, which is a really big deal for blind people. Once that’s done he’ll take you out to a “just friends” dinner and tell you all about his daughter, who’s actually in her mid thirties and doesn’t really have an interest in flying, as it turns out.

But that won’t discourage him from helping you fulfill your dream of reaching the skies, largely through using a voice-assisted auto-pilot system to take off, land and navigate in flight, and ensuring that you always have a trained, experienced co-pilot who can step in in the event of an emergency since, as a blind person, you can’t even see the controls, let alone what all those crazy little gauges are up to.

Congratulations Blind Pilot!