What are the odds? And some of us are very odd

[cosmolinguist]

I thought I'd just get dropped off at the train station after our session (and the all-important debrief in Costa) was finished. But I should've known: my lovely colleague has sight loss herself and assured me that they -- she, her husband/PA, her guide dog -- would wait until I was safely on a train.

But first, I needed to pee, so I got directed to the gents' and I was only gone for a few minutes but when I walked back up the platform I saw those two (three, counting Flick the dog) standing with two other ladies chatting away. As I got closer I'd have guessed they were people R knew from work; one of them mentioned another charity that's known to us. I was happy to chill while they did that "Oh you know Nick?" kind of thing. But it turns out they didn't know each other; these women had just been at some sight-loss related event but one of them just spoke up when she saw the guide dog because she always does and is clearly the kind of person who'll talk to anyone. They had made friends at a local society for blind people, and had just come from, of all things, a funeral for someone they knew from that group. The chattier one told us about her eye condition, Homonymous Hemianopia -- and R and I said "that's the one we couldn't say before!" when we were going through a list of them at the session earlier; we both know about hemianopia but neither of us could get the word out at the time.

Then the other person said "And I have optic nerve hypoplasia."

And then I said "Shut up!" because I was so surprised. That's what I have! And even among other blind people, no one's heard of it. It's an odd, rare thing. I literally don't think I've ever met anyone else who's got it.

They and I ended up getting on the same train for the first 15 minutes or so, by which point the chatty one had made friends with the conductor and exchanged numbers with me.

My hypoplasia pal lives in Runcorn and says she comes to Manchester regularly; I said she should let me know if she wants to hang out.

Such a goofy coincidence, but an uplifting end to a day that could've gone better. (It was fine, it just...well, I'm too tired to explain it now. But it was fine. Just, could've been better.)

Comments

[otter]

That's a lovely story :)

[angelofthenorth]

Hugs for the day going not as well as it could do, but yay for finding a new friend who understands

[barakta]

Oh I love the full story here having seen mention on the Fediverse... What a nice meeting.

I hope your VI-doppelganger is interesting to get to know too, and you both learn useful stuff as well as have optic nerve hypoplasia solidarity!

[diffrentcolours]

You should have said that we were (accidentally) in Runcorn last Sunday :)