If you're blind, are you still able to cry?

My Seeing Eye dog Whitney usually leads me to Chicago’s Union Station to catch rides to the suburbs to visit schools, but when a friend from our Hackney’s days offered to drive us to Kindi Academy, a Montessori school in Lisle, Ill., yesterday I jumped at the chance.

Whitney and I at Kindi Academy yesterday.

It was raining in Chicago yesterday, and the train Whit and I would have had to catch left Chicago at 7:40 in the morning. That meant we would have been approaching the train station precisely when commuters were getting off trains. Commuters rushing to work aren’t on the look-out for ongoing pedestrian traffic, not to mention Seeing Eye dogs. We were safer — and warmer — in our friend’s car, plus Pat and I talked so much along the way that the drive flew by.

Kindi is a Montessori School for kids up to eighth grade., Our first presentation was for all the first, second, and third-graders. We spoke to the older kids after that, and the sessions were entertaining, as always. A sampling of their questions:

• What does your dog like to chase?
• If you’re blind, are you still able to cry?
• How long did it take you to learn to read and write Braille?
• How do you write books if you can’t see?
• How does your dog tell you, I mean, if there was a twig on the sidewalk and it was in the way, how does your dog tell you it’s there?
• What inspired you to write a book?
• That day in the doctor’s office, when they told you and your husband that you would never ever be able to see again, were you scared?
• Are all the books you write autobiographies?
• Does your dog recognize it’s your voice when you give a command, or if someone else told your dog to sit, would she sit?

The girl who asked that last question said she thought of it as a hypothesis, and I offered to test it out. “Give it a try!” I told the girl to say Whitney’s name and tell her to sit. She did. Whitney ignored her. “Aha!” squealed the girl. “She only listens to you! With that hypothesis solved, I stood up, lifted Whitney’s harness, said her name and commanded a stern, “Outside!”

The kids were all sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the library rug, and Whitney threaded me safely past them to the hallway door. “Good girl, Whitney!”

The children were wowed, and so was I — by their curiosity, the good manners, and their thoughtful questions. And a special thanks to our friend Pat Gartner for getting Whitney and me to Kindi Academy yesterday — we had a ball!.