Reasonable questions: our visit to St. Francis Xavier School last week

I’ve been visiting elementary schools with my Seeing Eye dogs more than 25 years now, so it’d be reasonable to think I’ve heard every single question a kid would dream up when it comes to blindness or guide dogs.

That’s us at St. Francis Xavier. (Photo by Jackie Petrozzi.)

Jackie Petrozzi

But hey, who ever accused kids of being reasonable?

Last Friday afternoon my Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I took a commuter train to Wilmette, a Chicago suburb, to talk with 400 students at St. Francis Xavier School. School leaders wisely broke the students into two groups – I spoke with the kids between kindergarten and 4th grade first, and then spent an hour with the kids between 5th and 8th grades.

Teachers read my children’s book Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound to all the younger ones before Whitney and I arrived. The older students prepared for our visit by watching our wonderful What’s it Like to Go Blind? video – that’s the YouTube the guys at The Good Stuff put together for us. With all that advanced research under their belts, the kids were armed with some very well thought-out questions when Whitney and I arrived.

In addition to asking the classic ones about how I get dressed, how I cook, and how I drive, the kids at St. Francis Xavier came up with some questions I’ve never been asked before:

• How long did it take to adapt to your blindness?
• When you write your books, how do you see the edits?
• You know how, sometimes, when the sun hits your eyes, and you squint, but you keep looking at the sun for too long, and then, you close your eyes real tight, and it makes you see colors? You know, like fireworks? Well, if you do that, can you still see those colors?
• Does your dog ever make a mistake?
• If they didn’t pick a dog for you, and you could choose your own Seeing Eye dog, why would you choose Whitney?
• How did you get here to take chances?

I really appreciate — and encourage — children’s curiosity, so I assure kids ahead of time that I’ll answer absolutely every question they ask during my presentations. I repeat each question before I answer it, too, so that one, I can make sure I heard it right; two, everyone in the audience can know what the question is; and three, most importantly, I have time to come up with an answer.

The kids were all seated criss-cross applesauce on the gym floor during our presentation, shortest ones in front, tallest in the back. That last question, the one about taking chances? It came from the front rows during my first presentation, which made me think the boy who’d asked was in kindergarten.

“How did I get to the point where I have to take chances?” I repeated. “Why do I have to take chances?” I’d never, ever been asked that one before. “Hmmm,” I said, turning my head toward the sound of the little boy who’d asked. “I’m going to need a couple seconds to think that one over.”

I started pondering my answer. Why do I still take chances? Didn’t I just break my hand in December after a fall? Wouldn’t you think I’d take fewer chances, seeing that I’m blind and all? Maybe this boy was right, maybe I should slow down….

Just when I was about to credit the kindergartner  for making a good point, he interrupted. “Not chances,” he said, sounding exasperated by his lisp. “Francis! How did you get to Saint Frances?” He just wanted to know how Whitney and I had managed to make it on our own all the way from Chicago to his school in the suburbs that day!