Tapping Back into Laughter After Vision Loss

Hadley

Tapping Back into Laughter After Vision Loss

Presented by Ricky Enger

Ricky Enger: When dealing with any challenge, including vision loss, humor can be an essential tool in the toolbox. But what if you're struggling to find anything funny in your situation? In this episode, John Hewitt joins us as we discuss ways to develop and use humor in reframing challenges. I'm Ricky Enger, and this is Hadley Presents. Welcome to the show, John. So great to have you.

John Hewitt: Great to be had.

Ricky Enger: Yes, indeed. So we are going to have lots of fun, one would hope so in an episode talking about humor. It really is awesome to have you here. We kind of discovered you because you wrote an email in response to a previous podcast and we like nothing better than feedback and flattery. So we reached out to you after that and just had a great conversation. But since our listeners weren't involved in that part of it, why don't you tell everyone a little bit about who you are and just a bit of background.

John Hewitt: So yeah, I lost my vision in my right eye at the end of 2023 and was fortunate enough to be able to retire at that point. The doctors at Vanderbilt did all these MRI scans and everything to figure out what's going on. And they said, "Well, the good news is you have kind of a brain and there's no brain tumor or anything going on. But the bad news is we don't know why your optic nerve decided that it was time to retire in your right eye. So your vision in your left eye could last a day or it could be there the rest of your life. We have no idea. So I decided to retire and then the vision in my left eye went out in January of 2025. For the most part, I still have some light perception in that eye that helps me get around the neighborhood.

I can see the street different from the ground and I use my cane to catch the curb. But I found that my sense of humor that developed over my lifetime really came in handy with what was going on with me with losing my vision. I started out with the youth ministry when I was young, and their motto was it's a sin to bore a kid. And boy, we were really good at not boring kids. One of my first jobs was working in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Shout out to my Annapolis folks out there. Working at going out into elementary schools and high schools and talking about drugs are serious issues, what they do to families, what they do to our lives are serious. But the point about humor is not that blindness is funny or disabilities are funny, but we're funny. Being human, the human condition is ripe for humor.

What I found is that when I would introduce things, I was willing to be silly and funny with kids and they really appreciate it. I did these high school assemblies about drugs. You can imagine, they're so excited to hear your perspective. "Oh, tell me old man, what do you have to say to us, children?" But I would start out just making fun of drug prevention speakers in general. And it went over really well. And I used a lot of stories that were funny at first and pretty gross. Speaking of kids, you better have some gross, especially high school kids because they remember that. And even in my work for the Crisis Intervention Center here in town, I was the outreach director for a couple years and I had to do a lot of suicide prevention talks. Well, man, can you be funny with that?

Well, suicide, you're talking about emotions. And I have a great story about emotions that I would lead with and I'm going to treat you to that right now. So Ricky, did you ever experience the movie Titanic?

Ricky Enger: Yes.

John Hewitt: Okay. So back in the day, I went to see the movie Titanic, more because my wife wanted to go and I especially wanted to support her because she's a nurse, hospice nurse, oncology nurse, all the things. And I thought, I better go to this movie just to be there for her because this is going to melt her. I mean, this is an emotional ... I'm going to be there to support her. But I told myself, I'm a man. Now I'm going to this movie and as a man, I can't what?

Ricky Enger: You can't cry. You can't show emotion.

John Hewitt: Right. No crying. No crying. You got to support the man card, the brand, all those things. So I told myself I wasn't going to cry. And then in the movie everything goes down, you know what's going to happen. But then they put these little scenes in there. They put a scene where an older man and woman are clutching each other as the water's rising in the room.

That got me a little bit. There was some unidentified moisture, a UMO an unidentified moisture object in my left eye that I wiped away real quick. And I did the flexing. I flexed my pecs, did the deep breath. Okay, I'm good. I'm good. And then there's another scene in which there's a lady putting her baby to sleep as the water's rising in the room. And because I had two young daughters at the time, I had unidentified moisture coming out of both eyes and that took a lot of work to get over that. But I stabilized. I was okay. I looked at my wife. I was just looking at her and that scene would've just made her cry uncontrollably, I'm sure. But I'm focused, I'm good, I'm back, I'm strong.

And then there's a scene on the outside of the boat where a man takes a little girl and he puts her in the boat to be with her mother. And the little girl looks up at the mom and goes, "Mommy, how come daddy’s not getting in the boat?" And that father looks, he goes, "Oh, sweetheart, there's another boat for daddies." That was it. It was over. I was sobbing. I mean, sobbing like a real man, just buckets, water coming out. And I actually yelled at the screen, "You're a liar. There is no other boat for daddies." And I'm a wreck. And I was like that. And I thought, my poor wife, she must be on the floor. She's so empathetic. She's so caring. She's out. It's like, yeah, I better check in on her. I look over at her and she's not doing anything.

Ricky Enger: She's fine. She's fine.

John Hewitt: She's not crying. She looks at me, she does a double take and she goes, "Why are you crying?" And I'm like, "Why are you not crying?" And then she says, very matter of factly, "Well, if that's me, I'm on the life boat. I'm fine. I'm okay." Oh, my word. I'd tell that story, and everybody would laugh and they'd get it. And it was a great opening to how we deal with emotions. But I found that laughter, humor in that moment really helped people get to that point. It's a tool you can use in different situations.

Ricky Enger: Yes. And that's a question that I had actually, we think about laughing and it's like, oh yeah, laughter is the best medicine. We always hear that. It's just like, yeah, it feels good. And I don't think we really stop to consider any deeper than that, but I think laughter does serve a lot of different purposes. Humor can be used in so many different ways. And I think one of those is to help you tap into emotions that otherwise you're just not going to open that door. So are there other things that humor can do that can help in these situations?

John Hewitt: Oh, absolutely. I've got so many stories where humor just reframed the situation. I was a hospice volunteer coordinator for a while, and I'll never forget walking out of a patient's room with a new volunteer, and we're walking down the hallway and she stopped me and she goes, "Hey, are we supposed to have that much fun with people? " And Ricky, I stopped in the hallway and I'm like, well, it just was so natural to me. This is what you do. You go in, you chat somebody up. You're not their family member. You don't know them that well. And let me tell you, 99% of hospice patients do not want you to be sad and somber when you walk in the room. There's enough of that going around. They want you to treat them just like a regular person. And most people, if you come to visit me, I want you to be fun.

Ricky Enger: Right.

John Hewitt: I want you to lift my spirit. You don't have to be Mrs. Comedian or whatever. I don't expect that. And here's the thing about the humor. The funniest thing in the world is you. And if you can get your own ego out of the way and be willing to let someone chuckle at you a little bit, tell a little funny story about yourself. I got lost on the way over here. Whatever the thing is, right? And we can get our own ego out of the way. It's so powerful because it helps other people and it really helps ourselves. What I had learned is I had to teach my hospice volunteers how to use that, how to flex that sense of humor. And again, not developing into a comedian or anything, but just learning what was ironic, what was funny.

Going back to the medical folks, I had this nurse, I could just tell she had full of life and I knew she had used some humor with people to help them. And she was working for a radiation oncologist and radiation therapy's tough. She told me, "Oh, John, I did this thing the other day.” People had come into the waiting room and this one lady that she knew was kind of down, more so than usual. And so this nurse, Tara, she says, "Oh, honey, how are you doing today?" Now she's shouting across a waiting room with like 30 people in it. This lady sits down at the far end and just looks down and says, "You really want to know?" And Tara goes, "Oh, sweetheart. Yes, honey. Oh, please, please tell me." And the lady says, "I just want to have sex." And Tara didn’t lose a beat. She just goes, "Oh, with me?" And Tara said, “John, the place just erupted in laughter. There's 30 people in there. The patients are laughing. Everybody's laughing. The doctor actually came out to see what was going on. Tara, helping that lady laugh, did not change her treatment regimen. It didn't change her prognosis, but it sure as heck changed the window out of which she was looking that day. It reframed.

Actually, I looked this up, some therapists use humor, especially as part of the cognitive behavioral therapy to help patients reframe situations. They keep a humor journal kind of lifting their spirits and it reframes it and gets them around some of the negative thinking that they do. Or if they're anxious or depressed about a certain situation, they're worried about an outcome. What a therapist helps them do is just take that to the extreme. You're worried about a thing and then, and then it’s juxtaposition. And that's the thing about humor, I realized that to someone like me, irony just comes naturally. When I was sighted, I did a lot of hiking and backpacking, and you'd come across a sign that said scenic view.

Ricky Enger: What does that mean?

John Hewitt: Right. If you can read the sign, do you not know it's scenic? I mean, who are you to tell me it's scenic? I'm going to decide. I just thought that was crazy. And I thought two things. One, boy, there's a lot of people that need to develop their sense of irony. The second thing is there may have been people that thought that was funny, but they did not choose to use it.

Ricky Enger: You think that's because you have to approach certain things with, okay, I have to put my serious face on. Do we do that too often?

John Hewitt: Yes, I think we do because we presuppose that it's not appropriate in a situation. And obviously there are situations in which it's not appropriate. I've had some people in the blind community, John, you use a lot of humor about being blind. You tell all these funny stories about things that happened to you being blind and people's reactions to you and that kind of thing, but are you appropriately grieving? And I said, "Oh yeah. Oh buddy, that's the side of me you don't see though, unless you ask me." The first time I'm sitting down at dinner with my family, with my daughters and my granddaughter and my son-in-laws, and I realize I'll never see their faces again. Now that hit me hard, but I didn't react right away until later when I sat down in bed, I had me a good cry about all the things that I'm grieving.

So humor's not meant to deflect that. It’s a tool sometimes to be used to help you. And in the blind world, it's just a really powerful tool. For example, what happens to me a lot of times being blind is that people grab me. I know we've all had this experience, right?

Ricky Enger: Oh yeah, too many times.

John Hewitt: Right? People grab you. I'm walking down the hallway at the Y, and somebody grabs me and you have to be careful how you react because they want to help you. And so it might be a thing where you can engage them in conversation. Now what I do is if somebody grabs me like that, instead of pushing away or making it clear that they have really overstepped the bounds, I go, "Hey, hey, hey, this show's not free, baby. What are we doing here?" Oh, they laugh and you can talk to them about the appropriate ways to interact and it diffuses the situation. It really helps to use humor in a lot of those situations to help us diffuse, but also teach.

Ricky Enger: Yeah, it's a great point. Put people at ease. If they're uncomfortable with you and you show that you can laugh, then it helps open the door to that emotion. Okay, now we can relate as opposed to, "I don't know anything about you and I'm feeling very uncomfortable and I'm afraid I'm going to say something wrong."

John Hewitt: Yes. And in our own journey, think about all the things that keep us blind people from living the life we want to live. A lot of times it's our own ego. They don't want to identify as blind. What's that about? It’s about ego? And you can laugh at that ego, and you can get that stupid thing out of the way. And the ironic thing is I don't employ that sense of humor with myself often enough. So many times, I'll get mad at something and if I could just take a step back and think, who do you think you are? You think you don't have to work at this?

Ricky Enger: Right, right.

John Hewitt: I remember my first big blind meeting with the National Federation of the Blind here in middle Tennessee, a driver picked me up and got me into the meeting and sat me down and he wasn't going to come pick me up until about 10, 15 minutes after the meeting's over because I wanted to talk to some people. The meeting's over and I'm sitting there thinking, they don't know I want to talk to them. What am I going to do? Oh, I'm going to have to get up and yell. How else would they know? I'm thinking, that’s awkward. I'm thinking, "Dude, you're with a bunch of blind people. They are not going to freaking care." But it was awkward. I had to think it through. Who am I arguing with? I'm arguing with myself.

So I get up and I go, "James, come to the sound of my voice." I have one of those titanium canes because I can put my weight on it. It's great. And so I'm whacking people, whacking the desk. And my wife said the first time she came to one of those meetings, she said, "Oh my God, you blind people are so funny. You're just running into each other and everybody's laughing."

Ricky Enger: Absolutely.

John Hewitt: Right? Because we're all doing it. And to get to that point where you're free to do that, you have to laugh at yourself. The first time I used Be My Eyes, I was getting my hiking shoes from the garage and I couldn't find them. I'm like, "Dude, you're not going to find them with your cane. Call a Be My Eyes volunteer." And then I'm arguing with myself — Oh, I don't want to do that. Why don't you want to do that? Well, I don't want to bother somebody. Why don't you want to bother somebody? This is what they do. They signed up for this. What's happening here is my own ego. I didn't want to admit I needed some help. I sat down and thought about it later, why was I so reluctant to do that? And it's because, well, I'm projecting my own ego into that moment. My own identity is at stake here. And why is that?

So humor can really help you reflect on some pretty interesting things that will help change the way you frame what you're doing and how you're doing it. And also, Ricky, in our world, just in a general sense, the more that you can learn to laugh at some of these things and develop your sense of irony, the more you can do that, the more fun you are to be around. I can't emphasize that enough.

Ricky Enger: So how can you do that? For people like us, when I'm happy, I laugh, when I'm upset, I'm trying to laugh and deflect. When I'm annoyed, I try to find something to laugh about. So it's kind of the first thing that I turn to. And for you, it seems similar. We might not always get there immediately, but it's in the top row of those tools in our toolbox. But for some people, maybe they feel like they're not naturally wired like that. So, if you're not thinking of yourself as the class clown or whatever, then how do you go about developing that irony or that humor or that ability to look at things in a humorous way?

John Hewitt: Yeah, I understand. You can develop your sense of irony. And the little acronym I came up with was LIE. I want you to LIE, Ricky.

Ricky Enger: All right then.

John Hewitt: Okay. The L stands for laugh. And the first thing is to laugh at yourself. Use a humor journal to think about what makes you laugh. When I did my workshop for medical social workers, I would tell them to reflect and think on a story that they laughed at. There's something that made them laugh. Write it down or make a note of it or use a notes app on your phone or whatever the technology, but think about what made you laugh recently and why? Why was that funny to you? What happened?

Was it a story about yourself or someone else or something you saw that was ironic? And by the way, irony is the second part of that lie. So the juxtaposition of two things, right? I mentioned that scenic view. So one tool here for irony is think about all the things that you know. What would be ironic about that? What would change that up? For example, come up with a list. We have a little competition here in our church, we're all memorizing the beatitudes. And I started thinking, oh, there's no more source of irony. Think about all the blind beatitudes. Blessed are you when people grab you out of the dark and think that you are a helpless blind person and you correct their error by smiting them with your titanium cane? I mean, it's just endless, right?

Ricky Enger: Or the braille sign that says, don't touch.

John Hewitt: Beautiful example right there. But you can do this on your own. I heard this blind comedian once had a list of 10 great things about being blind. And the first one is, you don't have to worry about being a designated driver. So come up with your own list, 10 great things about being blind, whatever that is. And that exercise in and of itself, finding the irony, putting those lists together, thinking of those funny things that have happened to you. And the last part of that LIE is embellish.

Take one of the stories, something's happened to you, something that you tell about yourself a lot to explain yourself to other people. You take a story and you embellish it and you do this as an exercise. And again, you don't have to be getting on stage and telling it to a room to make them laugh. It's just that you can use it when you're talking with friends to take a story to that level, to exaggerate and embellish it.

It's okay to laugh at ourselves, even though we're trying to be super confident and all that, if you could just laugh at yourself a little bit, it reframes it, right? Let's just go out and fail.

Ricky Enger: And it does help, I think, to take the ego out of it. If you don’t tell the story as it happened, but to embellish it a little more, now you are seeing the ridiculousness in the situation and taking it to that next level.

John Hewitt: Absolutely. Or another way to use this is you're going down the hallway at my favorite place, the Y, and you're tapping your cane so that people can hear. Because a lot of times in a place like the Y, people are in little conversation groups, they run into a friend and they go to the side of the hallway and they're so engrossed in conversation they don't see you even if you're tapping, even hear you sometimes. I've run into them a couple times and, I thought, "Well, gosh, what would be funny to say there?" If a certain group of people, you could say, "Oh, I'm sorry. All I can see is how wonderful you are." Or, "Excuse me, you're in my blind zone." But try to think, what would be funny to say? What would be funny for you to say at that time to help diffuse the situation?

So anyway, that acronym, learn to laugh at yourself, what's funny to you, keep a journal, where's the irony in things? Come up with a list of stuff and then see what would be ironic or funny in that list or the 10 greatest things about being blind, what are they to you? And then embellish, take that story and just ratchet it up.

Ricky Enger: I love it. It's really good advice. And it's a way that whether you're already thinking about what is funny in everyday life or you don't traditionally turn your mind in that direction, it's still like a concrete exercise that you can do to think about and reframe things a little differently.

So I've been blind for a long time and I feel like I have heard every blind joke there is, and I've probably told most of them. And there are some things that the first time you hear it, it's kind of funny and you have a chuckle. Second time you hear it, you might chuckle, but a little bit less. Do you have any thoughts about when people who are around you and they're trying to use humor to diffuse the situation, but it gets to a point where it's like maybe I say," Oh, I'm watching a really good series right now, but are you though? Are you really- Yeah. Yeah.

John Hewitt: Yeah.

Ricky Enger: Do you have thoughts about how to approach that where you're saying, I still want you to be able to laugh with me. I find this funny, that particular joke though, enough.

John Hewitt: That depends on how well you know the people that are doing it because with my mostly guy friends, one of the reasons we like being around each other is we can be extremely sarcastic with each other. One of my good friends when I first would, like a week after I'd lost my vision, I had some old friends come by and one guy leaned into me and goes," Man, I bet you didn't see this coming, did you? It made me laugh so hard. Oh my word.

So if you have friends like that, you can lean into them pretty hard, but you do have to signal to some people because it's difficult because one of the things you want to get across is look, yeah, I'm blind, but I just want to hang.

Ricky Enger: Exactly.

John Hewitt: Just treat me like a regular person, right? So yeah, you do have to communicate that gently with people. Someone like you, Ricky, you've got a great sense of humor. You use it often. So they may be thinking you always want to laugh or chuckle about stuff. And it's interesting that people don't read the room. I mean, they can see the expression on your face. They can read you a little bit, so you got to let them know a little bit. Sometimes you have to lean into that, how you're feeling.

Ricky Enger: Yeah. Sometimes it is about advocating for yourself, even when it's uncomfortable. And maybe you step back and think of a way to, like you said, advocate with humor. "Hey, come on, get some new material."

John Hewitt: Absolutely. Yeah. And again, the more you can do that with a little humor, it's a little sugar in the medicine, if you will.

Ricky Enger: So people are funny. And I think that's the thing is that sometimes we have to laugh at the situation. And I think there are a lot of situations that we will encounter where someone says something that is so thoughtless or just out there that is not in any way associated with the reality you are living in. There's where you employ that irony, right?

John Hewitt: Oh, absolutely. And the other thing too, I would always stress in workshops, I said, "Look, there are times you're going to try and make someone laugh and it's not going to go. It's not going to work." And either they might be offended some kind of way because you don't know their context, what's going on, or it just wasn't funny in the moment. Just wink at them and say, "Hey, it's just trying to make you laugh, man. Sorry." You do that, you'll cover a lot of bases.

And so in a lot of ways, humor can rock or lift our spirits, help us see the world through a different lens, help us tackle difficult emotional challenges that we're not willing to do and just be more fun to be around, more fun to be with.

And again, it's not the only tool in the toolbox. And I would stress this with my volunteers and hospice and other places, but it's just a tool that I saw so many people not use when they could have.

Ricky Enger: Right. Yeah. It's important to know what's there and when and how to use it. Absolutely.

John Hewitt: Yeah. And you can further develop your own. So you may not think of yourself as someone that can figure out what's funny in the moment or what would be ironic or whatever, but you can work on that.

Ricky Enger: Well, I really love the tips that you gave to make a list of the things that have made you laugh because understanding that can help you understand parts about yourself and what you find funny in life. And once you figure out what that is, it helps you start thinking in that direction. This has been so much fun. I knew it would be ... I feel like we could trade stories all day. And if you are listening to this and you are hoping for some examples of humorous stories like wearing mismatching shoes and the like, we do have some podcasts on just some funny blind or low vision bloopers that we have shared with each other and other people have shared as well. So we'll have those in the show notes too. John, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to share some stories, have a couple of laughs and give us some tips on how to keep doing that.

John Hewitt: Oh, it's been my pleasure. And I know there's people out there listening thinking, "Man, I'm funnier than that guy. How come I'm not on the show?" Well, I hope you contact Hadley with your own stories and ways that humor has helped you.

Ricky Enger: Yes, we would love to hear from you. Thank you, John. It's been a pleasure, and thank you all so much for listening.

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