An Allegory

As I have commented in an earlier post and demonstrated in a few, I enjoy and often find metaphorical meaning in literal actions or statements - like searching for meaning in running with cheese or walking on frozen footsteps. Sometimes the converse happens as well and I was struck last evening by the walking demonstration of a commonly thrown about adage.

I am surprised now to find that the phrase I will be referencing originates in the Bible (and not at all surprised that I wasn't able to recognize it as such). The Biblical origins of the enacted simile are all the more humorous to me as my story takes place in a smoky, drunken bar - a wonderful place for Tuesday night Guinness on special, but perhaps one that doesn't often inspire Bible quotes.

At the table behind my group of imbibement sat a heavily smoking trio of drinkers. My back was to the group of three women and I didn't notice much about them other than the irritating level of noxious fumes floating over the booth wall until the patrons arose and readied to leave the bar. In the hand of each woman was a long, slender cane and two of the women placed large, dark glasses over their eyes. They then stood in a line, each holding a cane with one hand and a friend's shoulder with the other.

I couldn't stop my amazed mind from silently screaming over and over, "The blind leading the blind. The blind leading the blind!" I didn't have time to really think about the phrase and explore or acknowledge that it is not often quoted as a celebration of the resourcefulness of the unsighted, but instead as a warning about the dangers of the unenlightened leading the unenlightened. Before my mind grabbed at the connotation denoted to "the blind leading the blind", the metaphorical danger was literally enacted in front of me, as the second woman in the trio (both a blind follower and a blind leader), smacked face front into a wall. The blind (or, one assumes, the semi-sighted, as she was placed in front and wore eyeglasses) leader failed to communicate the sharpness of the turn out the door either with words or her body movement and the second woman failed to angle her body sharply enough for the egress.

I don't mean in any way to indicate that I found pleasure or humor in the path of these women and I felt guilty witnessing the wall bonk, but I still can't get over my amazement of the perfect literal enactment of the blind leading the blind. It is, indeed, a dangerous thing. And, if it not so wordy and perhaps offensive to the original Biblical meaning, I would add a caveat that it is even more dangerous for the drunken blind to lead the drunken blind.