Ryan Knighton - Eyes on the Road

 

I'm 17 years old, and I've got thick glasses, and I've got really complicated 1980s hair, [audience chuckles] and I've got a fresh driver's license. I'm out gassing my dad's car up out at a gas station out among the blueberry farms of my hometown in Canada. I'm late and I'm way past curfew, because I've been helping my girlfriend climb in through her window. [audience laughter] And so, I got to get home. And so, I finish gassing up the car and I'm leaving this gas station. I look down the road, it's all clear. And I make my turn. And suddenly, there's this horrendous metal crashing noise. I'm not hit from the front and I'm not hit from behind. It emanates from underneath the car, and the car lifts and stops.

 

So, I open the door and I get out. It's a long way down. [audience chuckles] When I look under the car, I see I've actually managed to Stonehenge my father's Pontiac Acadian on a boulder. [audience laughter] There's actually this row of decorative boulders that lead to the exit of the gas station. I've turned about 20 feet shy of the road, and I'm perched. [audience chuckles] I hear the gas jockey shout, "Nice one. [audience chuckles] You're a smart one, aren't you?" How am I going to explain this? Out where I lived out there in those farms, like, if you don't have a car, you don't have a life. I just got my life. [audience chuckles] I'm not letting these boulders take my life. [audience laughter] And the gas jockey says, "I'll get a tow truck," which is going to take my life. 

 

So, I just get in the car, and I do the only thing I know how to do. I start it and I dump the clutch in the gas and I bounce and it catches, and somehow, I launched a Pontiac Acadian off a boulder. [audience laughter] And I'm free. But I didn't notice that there was another row of boulders across the lawn, [audience laughter] which I then cleared. The next morning, my father wakes up and he goes out to work. He gets out and his car is sitting in a pool of oil in the driveway. And so, I dig a finger into my 1980s hair and I just scratch it like, I don't know what happened. [audience chuckles] I keep it to myself, and I tell myself, "Just look harder next time. Just look where you're going, you idiot."

 

So, I do look harder. I look harder, and I don't notice the stop sign that I blow through a week later when I frogger right across a four-lane freeway. And so, I look harder for stop signs when I drive in the oncoming lane, twice. So, I stopped listening to music in my father's car. I cleaned my glasses, and I even took my 1980s hair out of my eyes. My 1980s were over, but my independence had just begun. I just needed more practice. That's all I kept telling myself. So, one night at about 02:00 in the morning, I'm crawling home in first gear from this party, because I'm looking for the turn to my parents’ street and I can't find it. I don't know why, it just seems really foggy for this time of year.

 

I see the turn, and I make it, and the car descends into this ditch. It doesn't even touch the bottom, it doesn't even touch the water, I just literally parked my father's car on the banks of a ditch, like a mole on a face. And I got out. How am I going to explain this? Like, if I had crashed my father's car at 50 miles an hour, I would have been normal. But crash your father's car at 2 miles an hour? [audience chuckles] It scared the hell out of me. It scared the hell out of my father who demanded an explanation. And I said, "I don't know, I just didn't see the turn." He's like, "How do you not see a massive empty ditch?" "I don't know, it's just a big blank spot. I don't know."

 

And he says, "How do you not know you had to see something?" And I don't. So, I just say “I lied.” I said I was drunk. He didn't speak to me for several weeks. And it hurt, because I knew it was a lie and it was mine, but it filled the hole. Something about it just didn't sit right with my mom. So, a few weeks later, she sent me to the doctor to get my glasses checked. Maybe they needed to be thicker. And so, I go in and the doctor shines his light in the eye and it doesn't refract back. He says, “You're night blind.” And he said, “You have this thing called retinitis pigmentosa. It's a genetic condition. It just can occur. It begins by losing your night vision, and then you slowly lose your peripheral vision, and it closes in and then you go blind. It could take two years, it could take 20. Do you have any questions?” [audience laughter] 

 

My father's car was right, I was going blind. It's what had been telling me all along. My father and I drove home from the doctor. It was my 18th birthday. We drove past that spot and he did this sort of bullseye that he does through the nose, the dads do. I knew what he was doing was he was filling with a guilt for what he'd said to me. And it's a guilt he's never let go. So, after that, it was odd, because like, how did I feel about being told I was going blind. I felt relieved, because suddenly it all made sense. Everything that had happened to me on those nights, I wasn't crazy, I wasn't clumsy, I was going blind. My driver's license became this picture of a guy who was slowly receding from me. I gave my dad his keys. And instead, I picked up a white cane. 

 

It didn't take long. And the relief gave away to an anger. And that anger was only saved by punk rock. [audience chuckles] It was odd, because I just gotten my independence right? I'd just become a man, and they took it away. And now, my mother is driving me to school, my mother is reading my mail to me. And worse, I became inspirational. [audience laughter] You cross the street, and people applaud. [audience laughter] You cut your meat. Angel choirs come down and sing. [audience laughter] And worst of all, I became he. "Would he like a menu? Would he like a hand across the street? And he never drove again.”

 

Then one day, I'm camping with my brother and my father. I'm now 30. It's been 12 years. We're out in the boonies in these logging roads. My brother is tearing around on this four wheeled ATV out in the woods. It just sounds [beep] fun. [audience chuckles] I haven't run in seven years at this point. And to feel like going fast and controlling yourself at the edge of that speed, it's just been so long. So, he gets back, I say to him, "Do you remember that stupid movie Scent of a Woman? [audience chuckles] There's a scene in it where Al Pacino plays this blind guy. He drives a Ferrari around New York like anybody could. There's a guy in the passenger seat, says, 'Little left, little right.' He just does it. Do you think it works?" [audience laughter]

 

So, 15 minutes later, we're on this narrow logging road. I'm holding the handlebars. My brother is behind me, and he says, "Are you sure you want to do this?" [audience chuckles] And we go. I'm blowing through gears like potato chips. I don't know how fast we're going, but it's fast enough that the wind is making my eyes water. "A little left, A little right. A little left. Left, left, left, right, right. right " It's working, and I'm chasing it. I cannot feel that edge of independence. I just feel reckless. I think maybe just a little faster, I'll find it there. So, I go faster. And he says left. And I hear right, because the wind is wiping his words away. So, I wrench right and he says left. And for some reason, I wrench right harder. He reaches around and makes this death cry, [audience chuckles] and he wrenches us clear of a tree about a foot away from us.

 

I've almost killed my brother. For what? For a little bit of independence, for a little speed? What do you say to somebody when you've almost killed them for that? So, I turn to him and I say, "Let's do it again." [audience laughter] And he says, "Shut up." And I'm like, "How fast were we going?" He's like, "Shut up." And I'm like, "Were we really close to that tree?" He's like, "Get off." [audience laughter] And I feel bad, but not bad enough that I don't ask him to record his death cry on my voicemail. [audience laughter] It's like, "Please leave your message after the--" [audience laughter] 

 

Then one day, I get this call from a writer in Toronto. And he says, "Have you heard about this race in Granby, Quebec? There's a race around a speedway track. It's a circular track. It's 40 cars, and it's blind drivers, and they're allowed to have a sighted passenger tell them what to do. It's a race to see who can complete 10 laps first. Would you want to do that?" [audience laughter] I hear my brother's pig slaughter death cry, and I say, "Of course, it's racing. It's not driving. I swore I'd never drive again, but this is racing." [audience chuckles]

 

So, two months later, we're standing at the safety briefing. There's 80 people standing there. And because it's Quebec, they give you the safety briefing in French first. I don't understand a word of French. So, we just listen and we wait. I say to Pasha, who's my sighted passenger, I say, "Tell me what the people around me look like, and what are we up against?" And he says, "Well, there's this dad and a son over there. The dad's blind. He's about 60. Son's maybe 30. He's got his hand on his dad's shoulder. They look inspirational." [audience laughter] I hate inspiration. [audience chuckles] And you could just hear the Disney music underneath it. The choral angels come down. It's like, "We're going to do it, dad. [audience chuckles] Yeah, we're going to drive son just the way we used to." [audience laughter] 

 

I turn to Pasha and I say, "I don't care what happens. We take them out." [audience laughter] And he says, "That's a bit mean, isn't it?" And I say, "Somebody has to take a stand." [audience laughter] They finish the safety briefing and they say, Bonne chance. And they don't do it in English. [audience laughter] So, 15 minutes later, we're sitting in our car, and I turn on my turn signal to drive the sighted people crazy. [audience laughter] They wave the green flag. They wave the green flag, and nobody goes. [audience laughter] I don't really know why. Like, we had sighted passenger. I don't know, you guys are sighties. You figure it out. [audience laughter]

 

So, they went and got a pistol and they shoot the pistol, and then it was Road Warrior. [audience chuckles] It was a demolition derby trying to be a race. It was like cholesterol-- Pop cars pile up in the bloodstream of the track. We're all going around trying to get around each other. There's fenders falling off and there's wheels falling off and people are screaming and Pasha's going "Left, right, left, right." [audience chuckles] It was boring. [audience chuckles] I couldn't see any of it. All I got was, “A little left, little right, little left, little right, bump.” [audience chuckles] 

 

When it was over, Pasha had to climb out my side of the car. [audience chuckles] I shut the door and I just-- Something in me shifted and I realized, like, “What am I chasing? Like, where am I trying to go so fast?” It's like, I live at the scale of my foot, not the tire. I live in a world that didn't expect me. I [beep] between the urinals. That's how I roll. [audience laughter] As for that father and son, I mean did we win? Did we take them out? I think sometimes in a story, as in a life, maybe you just don't get to see what happens at the end.