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Laughing at the darkness
There’s really only one rule to the “Dining in the Dark” dinners that have become an annual tradition in Greencastle: No peeking.
The dinner, a fundraiser for the Special Olympics organized by Yvonne “Von” Braden, gives those of us blessed with our sight a small taste of what someone like Braden, who is totally blind, goes through every day.
Just before the blindfolds went on for the meal Thursday at Myers’ 5 East, Braden reminded her guests of the rule and its consequences.
“If you finish before anyone else, no peeking, no helping anyone else,” Braden said, adding slyly, “And I’ll be watching.”
This comment brought a round of laughter from the nearly 50 community members at the third annual event.
Laughter was probably the most common sound Thursday evening, which is right in line with how Braden has long dealt with her disability.
It wasn’t that way at first. In the course of a year, she went totally blind and then her first husband died.
“So there I was, totally blind and alone and I thought, what am I going to do, just wait here to die?” Braden recalled.
That’s exactly what she didn’t do. Instead, Braden wound up going to work as the receptionist for Putnam County Comprehensive Services from 1995 through 1999. She returned on a part-time basis in 2011 and remains there.
It was at PCCS that Braden started to find reasons to laugh, whether it was occasionally coming to work in unmatched clothes, grabbing the wrong item out of the refrigerator for her lunch or simply telling former PCCS Executive Director Chuck Schroeder that she would “see” him later.
PCCS also gave her a reason to get out of the house, which Braden finds vital.
“People say, ‘Von, when are you going to retire?’” she said. “I’m not because, being blind, when I’m at home, I’m stuck at home.”
In that vein, Braden is the Putnam County contact for the Terre The WILL (Wabash Independent Living and Learning) Center, as well as leading the Living with Low Vision support group for The WILL Center. She also works at the Putnam County Community Foundation on a fill-in basis.
Through these contacts alone, she was on her way to filling the room on Thursday.
“I didn’t think we were going to have it this year, but things really went fast,” Braden said. “I think it’s starting to catch on.”
The proposition of dining without your eyes can seem daunting, but realizing that everyone in the room is in it together makes inhibitions, and certain table manners, go right out the window.
It’s yet another good source of laughs, though, one of many blessings Braden knows she has.
“I didn’t go totally blind until I was 53, 54. I know what a sunset looks like. I know the grass is green, the sky is blue,” Braden said. “I was blessed, I really was, that I had vision for so long.”