Thunder Dog

by Michael Hingson

Firefighters continue to stream up the stairs. Almost every single one stops to look at me, Roselle, and David. Over and over the same few words. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just fine. Thank you,” I say.

  “Are you with him?” they ask David.

  “Yes, I’m with him. We’re fine. Thanks.”

  As the firefighters pass, sometimes spontaneous clapping breaks out. I hear people thanking them and patting their shoulders. They’re breathing heavily.

  Progress is slow now. The closer we get to the bottom, the faster, not slower, I want to go.

  People are always surprised at how fast I walk. It’s different, of course, when I’m exploring a place for the first time. I usually leave my guide dog at home and use my white cane as an extension of my hands, and as it swings back and forth, tapping the ground, walls, and any objects in my path, I use it almost like a surveying device. It becomes a probe, and I use the information it conveys to map out a graphic, three-dimensional, detailed representation of the new location. I did this with the World Trade Center when I first started working there, exploring top to bottom until I knew it as well as I knew the cracks in the sidewalk in Palmdale.

  Most people think the cane is just a tool to use to detect obstacles in your walking path, but it’s much more. Tapping the cane creates sounds unique to the terrain. Dirt, stone, cement, asphalt, tile, wood, and rubber each create a unique sound that an experienced cane traveler learns to detect and identify. But the cane taps also generate an echo that good cane travelers learn to decode for information on the geography of the surrounding space just as I did years ago by listening to my bicycle tires as I rode around my neighborhood in Palmdale. For example, if I’m walking in a parking lot, the sound of the tap changes if there is a parked car in front of me before I ever get close enough to actually contact the car with my cane. As I walk through the cars, the tap sounds change again as I near the curb, the sound waves bouncing off the six inches of cement to create a unique echo. Over time I’ve learned to gather extensive information about my environment from the taps.

  Human echolocation, as it is sometimes called, also works with finger snaps, light foot stomps, or clicking noises made with the mouth. While it’s similar to the sonar and echolocation used by animals, humans make sounds with much lower frequencies and slower rates than bats and dolphins, so echolocation works for us mainly on larger objects. In other words, I can’t locate and dispatch a pesky mosquito via mouth clicks or cane taps. I’ll have to leave that to the bats. But human echolocation works well enough for a blind man named Daniel Kish to train people how to use the skill for activities such as mountain biking. Another man named Ben Underwood has used echolocation for running, Rollerblading, basketball, and skateboarding.

  Since I’ve been using a cane since my teens, I walk pretty quickly. I like to use a long cane so I can extend it out about three feet in front of me.

  With Roselle I can move just as fast except that she handles the job of avoiding objects, helping me travel more efficiently because she makes the choices of how to best avoid obstacles. Roselle studies me constantly, matching my speed. More than once I’ve jogged down an airport concourse to catch a plane, probably turning a few heads. Roselle can usually keep up.

  The slow pace on the stairs is frustrating, although understandable. Between the firefighters now taking up the left side of the stairs as they climb up, and the increasing size of the crowd in the stairwell, we are creeping along now. “Twenty-eight . . . twenty-five . . . twenty-two . . .,” David says.

  On the 20th floor now, the floor feels slippery. Why? What is it from? Spilled water? Sprinklers? Sweat? No one says anything, so it must be some sort of clear liquid. I’m guessing water. But whatever the liquid is, it makes my job harder. I focus, gripping the stair railing a little tighter. I’m even more careful with my feet. Roselle’s movements and pace aren’t changing; she doesn’t seem to notice the slippery stairs. But I need to be aware of her every move in case she slips, or in case I need to move quickly, increasing my chance of slipping.

  “Eighteen . . . fifteen . . . thirteen . . .” I try to control my breathing. Roselle’s breaths are coming fast. Will we pass out from inhaling the fumes?

  I check my watch. It’s 9:35 a.m. It took us just twenty minutes to travel from the 78th floor down to the 30th. But after we met the firefighters, progress was slower, and now we are down to a crawl. But we’re getting close.

  “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . six . . .” Now I want out of the stairwell. I’m tired of counting. My legs are starting to feel wobbly. I want fresh air. I want to call Karen.

  “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .” We are so close. If I weren’t hemmed in by people, I’d run.

  “First floor,” David calls back. “The sprinklers are on, and we’re going to have to run through a waterfall at the bottom of the stairs.”

  He’s not joking. Seconds later, when we reach the 1st floor and leave the stairs, I hear the sprinklers vibrating and water gushing onto the tile floor of the lobby. Roselle pulls down and dips her head to drink water off the floor. I know she’s parched.

  Wait! What’s in that water? With the smell of the jet fuel still strong in my nose and throat, I’m afraid the water might be contaminated. I hate to do it, but I pull firmly up on Roselle’s harness to stop her.

  “Hop up!” She responds, gracious as always, and looks up at me. I pause for a split second, the waterfall directly ahead. Then I take a big gulp of air. It’s time to run.

  “Forward!”

  A torrent of water floods over me. It is colder and more powerful than any shower I’ve ever known. After the heat and the fumes of the stairwell, it feels like a baptism, a cool and revitalizing initiation back into the land of the living.

  We made it. We’re out.

  I almost can’t believe it.

  “Good girl, Roselle. You did a great job.” We’re in the lobby of Tower 1 now, and I take a few moments to rub Roselle’s head and stroke the back of her neck. She rubs her cheeks against my hand then pulls away and shakes, starting with her head. I drop the harness, keeping the leash in my left hand.

  “Good girl,” I say again. “Shake it off.” I know what’s coming next. I hear her ears flap back and forth; then, as any good canine shake does, it proceeds down her spine and ripples out her tailbone as she shakes off the water. Fine droplets spray my hands.

  “Great job, Roselle. Good dog. Good girl.” I pick up her harness. It’s time to go home.

  David approaches. “Let’s go,” he says. The lobby is in chaos, with people everywhere walking and running across the wet tile floor. It’s a war zone. Ankle-deep water is full of debris, including ceiling tiles, building materials, and paper. Emergency workers are shouting, directing people towards the doors. Voices are anxious, strained, tight. A man approaches and identifies himself as FBI.

  “Come this way,” he orders.

  “Where do you want us to go?”

  He directs us toward the revolving doors to the underground central shopping arcade.

  “Thank you,” I call back as we walk away. “I appreciate your help.” In the middle of a little piece of hell on earth, when all of his instincts must be screaming at him to leave, get out, run away and don’t dare look back, this man stays put and offers his help. He is but one of many.

  When I escaped Tower 1 that day, I had no idea it would be the last time I ever set foot inside the building. It’s funny; when I talk about my 9/11 experiences today, people sometimes assume that I was there visiting, perhaps as a tourist. “What were you doing up on the 78th floor?” they ask. I can detect a faint sense of surprise when they begin to understand I was at work that day, just like thousands of other people.

  But sometimes, when I think about it, I am surprised too. The unemployment rate for blind people is staggering, somewhere near 70 percent of employable blind people, according to the Social Security Administration. The reason that many of the blind unemployed
cannot find jobs is that they have faced outright rejection because they are blind or because they have been discouraged by the fruitlessness of their attempts to find a job.

  I understand. I once had a job interview scheduled in San Jose, California, for a company that was producing new voice technology products. The night before I was to fly upstate, the headhunter doing the coordination called. “I notice that you’ve worked with several blindness-oriented organizations like the National Federation of the Blind,” he said.

  “Yes, that’s correct.” I knew where this was leading.

  “Is someone in your family blind?”

  “No. I am blind.”

  Early the next morning, the interview was canceled.

  My friend Dr. James Nyman, a former director of Nebraska Services for the Blind, faced a similar scenario when he first started out in the job market, seeking employment as a college teacher. He recalled “at least two rejection letters that flatly stated that a blind person could not manage the responsibilities of a faculty member.” He believes attitudes have improved over the years, but the prejudice is still there, just under cover. “We are not likely to encounter such open declarations in today’s atmosphere of social consciousness, but the more subtle forms are probably more difficult to combat,” he said.1

  Blind people face unnecessary barriers, and we can do far more than people think. But I have also learned that instead of thinking of blindness as a disability or a limitation, I can view it as a help. In fact, in my sales career my blindness became one heck of an asset.

  First, I don’t think of myself as “blind Michael Hingson.” There are other descriptors that rank much higher. I am also a husband, friend, son, brother, cousin, dog owner, sales manager, physics grad, vintage radio show enthusiast, writer, speaker, net-worker, barbecue chef, ice cream maker, humorist, book lover, horseback rider, man of prayer, technology geek, pianist, world traveler, and dancer. And that’s just for starters. Blind man is in there somewhere, but far down the list. One of the greatest compliments I get is when someone says, “I forgot you are blind.” Then I know for sure that individual is relating to me as a multifaceted person, not through the lens of my blindness.

  My brother, Ellery, reminded me recently of my very first meeting with his wife, Gloria. The two of them rode the train to meet me in Boston. Being a typical guy, Ellery didn’t think to tell her much about me. I was just his brother, Mike. I was single at the time, and I met Ellery and Gloria at the train station and led them to a cab. It was about four thirty in the afternoon, and traffic was slow. I directed the cabbie to take some shortcuts back to my apartment, and we skirted some of the congestion. At my apartment after we chatted a bit, I made a lobster dinner for the three of us. It was delicious. We made it almost the whole evening before Gloria noticed I was blind. That was delicious, too—just three people having a wonderful dinner and enjoying each other’s company.

  After my stint at Kurzweil Computer Products was over, I looked for something else in the high-tech arena. I enjoyed the challenge of sales and working together with customers to determine their needs. In the mid-1980s I started my own company with a friend selling specialized computer systems, including some of the early computer-aided design (CAD) systems that architects use. We did okay but didn’t make a lot of money. It may seem strange that a blind person could sell CAD systems until you think about it. When architects who came to see our products asked for demonstrations, I would sit them down in front of the screen and ask them what they wanted to draw and how they would do the job on their drafting tables. I then took them through the steps of drawing on a CAD system so that by the end of the demonstration, they had drawn their own building and could even conduct a three-dimensional tour of what they had drawn. My blindness prompted the customer to get even more involved than if a sighted salesperson had done the same presentation.

  After a few years we decided to close the doors, and I started doing sales again, working for several different companies that manufactured specialized disk systems and tape backup systems for customers who processed large amounts of business-critical data and needed a safe and secure method to store their records. We helped sell systems that could create and maintain data libraries for businesses in the areas of health care, government, education, media and entertainment, and finance.

  I loved my job and did my selling both by phone and in person. When I set up appointments, I usually didn’t tell people I was blind, not because I thought it would make a difference but because I just didn’t think to tell them. But the longer I worked in sales, the more I began to realize my blindness had a certain value in selling. I don’t mean I tried to make people feel sorry for me. I don’t think I ever made a sale that was motivated by the customer’s pity for me, feeling sorry for the blind guy. That’s one card I never play because I don’t see it as a handicap in the first place.

  But one area where my blindness came in handy was in product demonstrations. When I was on a sales call and I set up the product and took the customer through the steps of operating and troubleshooting the products, I could almost hear the wheels turning in the customers’ heads. “Gee . . . if a blind man can operate this, then anybody can.”

  Then there was the dog factor. Having a guide dog proved to be helpful in certain situations. Customers were more open to having conversations, and even if I could sense they were giving me dirty looks, they might not shoo me out the door as quickly. I worked hard to build relationships, to determine what the customer needed, and to solve problems with creative solutions. If I didn’t have a workable solution, I suggested alternatives. After I did everything I could do, I would stop talking, ask for the order, and wait. And I did well.

  As I worked my way up from humble sales rep to sales manager, I traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, and I worked with some great people at a company called Artecon.

  My sales reps and I had a good time. I used to egg them on to make their sales calls by telling them we were “dialing for dollars,” a theme I took from a low-budget TV game show by the same name. We worked in cubicles and I kept the atmosphere fun and lighthearted.

  Once a month I rounded up all the salespeople, and we piled into a motor home and headed to George’s Burgers, a greasy joint in San Marcos. One time they let me drive the motor home in the parking lot. “Just put the thing in D for Drive,” they told me.

  “When I hit the bumps, the Braille keeps me in between the lines,” I said.

  One of my favorite sales reps of all time was Billie Castillo. She was a firecracker and didn’t know much about technology when she started, but she made up for it in moxie and energy. “I was a sales rookie who didn’t know the difference between computer disk and tape, and you turned me into the World Wide Web Queen,” she said recently.

  Billie didn’t much like to fly, especially in the winter when they were de-icing the wings of airplanes. She always said I had a calming effect on her. “Something about your personality, your no-fear thing. You’re so used to adapting and reacting to the environment.”

  I traveled a lot of miles with Billie. We developed a great strategy using my guide dog Klondike at trade shows when we took walks around the other booths to check out our competitors’ products. Klondike would draw attention with people wanting to touch him or ask questions. “Oh, your dog is so cute. Can I pet him?”

  After we gathered a group of dog lovers, we’d slowly saunter back to our booth with Klondike, bringing the crowd with us. Once or twice Klondike accidentally stepped on power cords and interrupted the power supply to other booths. But who could get angry at a beautiful golden retriever?

  In 1996, I ended up with an office in the World Trade Center for the first time when I opened up a regional sales office in New York City for Artecon.

  One thing that impressed me about the World Trade Center was the stringent security. After the bombings in ’93, they put strict measures in place to control and monitor who went in and out of the buildings. In the lobby, you w
ere asked to provide your ID. If you were a visitor, they either checked your name off of a clearance list or called up the company you were headed to in order to verify that you were expected. After your identity was verified and your visit authorized, they took a photo and created a badge for you with a bar code. But just because you had a badge didn’t mean you had the run of the building; the badge limited your access to certain floors only.

  A few years and a couple of jobs later, I ended up in the World Trade Center again, this time with Quantum. In the year 2000 we opened an office on the 78th floor of Tower 1, the North Tower. I was regional sales manager, and this time I got an all-access security badge from the Port Authority, which meant I could go anywhere in the building, including the underground parking garages. I kept up my habit of taking a different route each time, and I explored the building and developed an array of shortcuts. Before I ever brought my guide dog, I used my white cane and explored the building, constructing my mental map so I would always know where I was.

  One of my best sales reps ever was Kevin Washington. If you can sell in New York, you can sell anywhere. And Kevin could sell in New York. He was a hoot and always gave me a hard time. He started calling my white cane a “ninja stick.” He also liked to challenge me and try to get me lost. He would walk with me to a certain point in a basement or parking garage then walk away and see if I could find him. He was fascinated with how I navigated, so he called me Batman “because you have built-in radar like a bat.”

  “We all know you can see,” Kevin used to joke. “Come on . . . there’s no way you can’t see.”

  Once, Kevin and I were walking down the street together with my guide dog. The sidewalk was crowded, and a woman coming the opposite direction neglected to move aside, bumped into me, and fell down. We helped her up, and she came up fighting mad. She shouted at Kevin, “You’re his handler. You should be more careful.”

  Kevin and I both reacted when we realized she wasn’t talking about the dog, she was talking about Kevin. Handler? If ever I was tempted to use my white cane as a ninja stick, that would have been the time. But Kevin and I just laughed it off.