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I think the turning point was when I end up going to the provider agency and attending
the sheltered workshop. What happened for a while was after I started having the seizures
and different things like that, that kind of changed my life for me for doing some of
the things that I had been doing. I was just always outgoing but now I had to be watched
where I go a lot of the times. I went to the workshop that was at the agency that was around
the corner from my house. I could walk there if I want, but they had a van or whatever
that came and picked you up and left you there, and picked you up in the afternoon. That was
an interesting experience for me, because I’m used to my independence, I’m an independent
person. And the store was right up the street from my house and I’m used to going there
myself, not needing permission to go to the store. So I’ll have someone go to the store
with me, and have had that happen in my life, that’s a normal thing. But for the workshop
to say, “No you can’t do that!” It was like, “What? I live near here. I should
be able to do that myself.” The rules and the way they treat people was so different.
We were prepared through school to be able to survive, and through college it was about
getting ready to live and work and all those things that you need to do. And here was a
whole new world: workshop, sheltered employment. So that wasn’t hard for me to figure out
how to adjust, but it was kind of an adjustment, more so for the mind than it was for the body
to adjust. They wasn’t preparing me to be independent. If we were doing mail or separating,
like maybe magazines or pamphlets, or stuffing things like that, putting them in order, here’s
the blue ones, here’s the green ones, here’s the red ones, these go first. These, these,
these… I got very good at doing those. Most of the jobs they gave me I tried to do them
to the best of my ability, but I wasn’t happy. I wanted more of a challenge. They
had a cafeteria in the workshop, and they had said to me at one time, maybe you could
do this, but their thoughts went away from that. So one day I wanted to work in there,
and my friend John had already been working in there –cause we had worked together on
the workshop floor doing some of those jobs, and we were a couple of the best people that
they had. So, I asked about the cafeteria, and they said, “Oh well, we don’t know.”
And then finally they talked to me about it, and they said, “One of the supervisors said,
I don’t think you’ll be able to do it because you’re blind.” And this was a
shock to me. I said, “I’m what? What does that have to do with anything? These jobs
that you do, I know that like the back of my hand. I took food service. I know how to
do this. I could probably do it better than you.” They said, “No.” I went back to
them a couple of times, they still said “no.” So I thought to myself, that’s the last
straw.