Is that a rude question, or a curious question?

It never fails. Every time my Seeing Eye dog Whitney and I visit a school, one of the kids comes up with a question I’ve never been asked before. Here’s my favorite from a trip we took to suburban Glenview earlier this month. “If you were never blinded, which would you rather be: a cat person, or a dog person?”

I’ll let you guess my answer.

The fifth graders at Glen Grove school.

The fifth graders we were visiting at Glen Grove Elementary that day are working with the Nora Project that I wrote about here earlier this month. They’ve already been paired with a student who has special needs. Now the fifth graders seem excited – yet understandably nervous – to start interviewing their buddy’s family members and others who spend time with their buddy outside of school. Maybe the best way to see how their curiosity about my blindness intertwined with their concerns about the upcoming interviews is to look over some of the questions they asked:

• You say in your Safe & Sound book that you take your dog’s harness off when you get home. How do you get around your house by yourself?
• What would be the best questions to ask to get the best answers from the Nora Project parents?
• You can’t see, so what sense do you rely on the most?
• If you tell your dog to sit, and you can’t see the dog, how do you know it’s sitting?
• What did it feel like when you found out you were blind?
• You and your husband were both working when you found out you were blind, and then they fired you, so what was that like with money?
• How do you know what you’re wearing?
• How can we ask questions to get long answers?
• Do you remember what your childhood was like?
• What do you do if someone answers your question wrong?
• When you’re asking somebody something, how can you tell if the question is a rude question or a curious question?
• You look great in that shirt!

That last one was a statement, not a question, but I didn’t correct the student who said it. I just thanked him…and blushed.

These students will be using iPads to record video of the interviews they do. Soon they’ll combine footage from the interviews with video of their own interactions with their buddies. The documentaries they create from all this footage will be presented at an assembly towards the end of the school year.

I just love this project. Playing a very small part of it during that visit earlier this month was an honor. To learn more about the Nora Project, visit thenoraproject.ngo. Documentaries produced by students from previous years are available there under the Nora Friends tab.