(gentle music)
Welcome to "Hadley Presents."
I'm your host, Ricky Enger, inviting you to sit back, relax,
and enjoy a conversation with the experts.
In this episode,
IT professional and standup comic Todd Blenkhorn
joins us to share his story.
Welcome to the show, Todd.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, it's so great to have you here!
And it's interesting, I'll just say that.
It's interesting how you ended up on the show with us.
I feel like everybody is connected.
We interviewed New York Times columnist Frank Bruni
a while back.
You had communicated with him as well
and you ended up in his current book,
which is really pretty cool.
That's how we found out about you.
And so we figured why not? Let's have you on the show!
Why don't we start by just having you
tell us a bit about yourself
and what you do for your day job,
and then maybe what you do outside that?
Sure, my name's Todd Blenkhorn. I live in Toronto.
I'm 45 years old.
I work for the CNIB,
and my title is lead enterprise application
and accessibility support.
Basically, I support our Salesforce system
and some accessibility stuff with outside vendors
and internal systems.
And then on the side, I'm a standup comedian.
Nice! I can't wait to hear more about that.
But before we do that,
I was just thinking it's really an interesting thing
that when people in the blind and low vision communities
start connecting with each other,
there's this icebreaker and it's like,
"Hey, what's your eye condition?"
And then, "Oh, I have that!" Or, "My friend has that!"
But I think for you, it's a rarity what you have.
Can you tell us what your eye condition is
and kind of how you got diagnosed and that kind of thing?
I have optic neuropathy.
Sometimes they call it ischemic optic neuropathy,
so I don't really know the difference. (chuckles)
Which is the same thing that Frank Bruni has,
which is how I got in touch with him.
Yeah. So it's a bit unusual.
It's usually a condition that people get hit with
in their mid-50s or 60s,
where they'll have one or two episodes
where they lose sight in one eye
and then possibly the second eye,
usually in the central vision.
But mine's different. Mine started when I was eight.
I've had maybe 20 attacks.
So I still have a little bit of vision left in my left eye.
They basically don't know why I have this or what causes it,
but it's really weird, 'cause it happens seasonally
in the spring or fall.
So they don't know what causes it
or what the underlying condition is,
just that I have optic neuropathy.
And so I guess if they don't know what causes it
or what can bring on an attack and that kind of thing,
they probably didn't know
what your vision loss progression
was gonna look like either.
So when you were diagnosed as a child,
did they tell you at the time,
"Oh hey, this is it.
And you probably won't lose any more vision."
Or how much did you know at that point
about what was gonna happen?
They really didn't know,
because they couldn't diagnose it for years.
Like I said, I was eight years old
and it was sudden vision loss.
Like I woke up one morning
and I couldn't see out of my right eye,
almost all of my right eye.
We went to the doctor,
they did like MRIs and CAT scans and stuff,
but they'd warned my parents that there was a good chance
it was a brain tumor.
Which is awful but it ended up being a good thing,
because it put things in perspective
when it turned out to be just vision loss, right?
So yeah, it was sudden like that.
And it took them a long time,
they diagnosed a whole bunch of different things,
And so like my parents were researching something
called Leber's disease, which sounded horrible,
and it turned out not to be that.
So we had a few scares, but it's just one of those things
that they can't really explain.
Yeah, and so you were never sure, I guess,
even from day to day, what was gonna happen next,
how much vision you were gonna have,
but was it then pretty gradual as it progressed?
Or did you have, you know, major thing after major thing?
At the beginning, it was major,
when I had more to lose, I guess.
Like my right eye went almost all at once
and like a year later I lost the rest of my right eye
and the bottom half of my left eye.
And then the attacks got smaller and smaller,
because there's not that much there.
And they were never sure.
I was part of a surgical trial at the University of Kentucky
where they actually went in behind my eye
and they said that everything back there was really big.
So they didn't know if that caused it, or I don't know.
I've been told a million things by a million doctors
and I think basically no one really knows.
(both laugh) Right.
So things did progress and at some point,
you actually began traveling with a cane
and then after that, you transitioned to a guide dog.
How did all of those transitions come about?
Did somebody have to convince you,
"Hey, look, you're not traveling safely.
You got to do this."
Or was it more a decision that you made yourself
based on things that happened
or, you know, how did all that come about?
Well, I was always really resistant to
using a cane,
which I don't think is uncommon.
But when I had kids, so when my youngest son was born,
I had another attack when he was eight months old.
And at that point I knew, like I couldn't travel safely.
I couldn't take my kids out safely.
Like they were a baby and three years old.
And obviously, at that point, you gotta suck it up
and got to be safe for them, right?
So I started with that,
and then I'd been using a cane for a while.
My family and everything had always encouraged me
to get a dog, so I looked into it
and it seemed like a good fit.
So I got one and the independence was just...
I really like it.
It took me a long time to get used to having a dog,
but it still has challenges,
but I like it a lot better than a cane.
Yeah. I think that's really common
for a lot of people.
And especially for people who maybe still have some vision,
there's always that feeling of,
"It's hard to trust the dog,
'cause I can see just enough to get in trouble,
and I think I know what I'm doing, but I really don't."
Did you ever have any instances like that
or were you pretty much like, "Okay, I'm all-in now."
No, that's kind of the hardest thing
is if you can see a bit, like I can,
it's almost unconscious, right?
Like you kind of override the dog
when he is trying to do something
and the dog's always right.
(both laugh) Yes.
If he tries to go one way and I correct him
and then I trip over something
and you start to realize, "Yeah, maybe he's right."
So it's a trust thing, but it takes a while.
So given that you have experienced
kind of a gradual shift in vision loss, I guess,
and you've had, you know, some periods where,
"Oh, it's gradual," and then some where you lose a lot.
But you had, I guess, the baseline,
which is you appeared to be fully sighted.
And then you had a period where, you know,
you've lost some vision
but maybe you're not traveling with any mobility device.
And then you are traveling with one,
but you still have some vision and that gradually decreases.
And I think going through that,
you've had a lot of chance to observe
just how people behave towards you.
So what kinds of things did you notice from, say,
I guess your baseline everybody thinks you're sighted,
to then what started to change as your vision did?
Yeah, it's funny.
It's kind of a both situations are difficult, right?
Like when I was walking around without a cane
and didn't seem to be visually impaired,
I had very little peripheral vision.
So I'd walk into people or trip over stuff
or just do kind of dumb things,
or I was young, didn't think anything was wrong with me.
If I bump into somebody,
then I've had people get mad at me or whatever,
or I've knocked stuff off over and just kind of dumb.
Like one time when I was a teenager
back when you could smoke everywhere, I was at the movies,
and we were on the balcony, on a mezzanine,
and I tripped over an ashtray and I knocked it.
Oh no!
Yeah, it went over the railing
and onto the concession stand below.
(both laugh) So I mean, stuff like that,
I don't look like I'm blind and I do something like that.
So that's hard, but it's different
once you start using a cane,
everyone can see you're blind and that's hard too, right?
Because you do get treated differently,
people talk to you differently,
or people talk to my wife instead of me, or I don't know.
I've had people try and give me directions
when I'm like in the middle of Young St. in Toronto,
which is a six-lane, like super busy street.
And someone will talk to me in the middle of the road.
Like I don't know, people mean well, but...
And you wonder how do they know where you,
how do you know where I'm going?
I don't think you do. (both laughing)
Yeah, and I'm in the middle of traffic.
Just let me go, it's fine.
And I think you do have to laugh at
things like that,
because otherwise it can really start to feel overwhelming.
So humor really is important, you know, for all of us.
It's good that we can laugh at ourselves,
it's good that we can laugh with people, and so on.
And so I guess we all do that to some degree,
but you actually took it a step further and you decided,
"Hey, you know what?
I'm pretty funny and I'm gonna do standup."
How did that come about?
First of all, how did you have...
I think that takes a lot of courage to do that.
And then how did you decide,
"Okay, this is the kind of material I'm gonna focus on."
Yeah, I've always loved standup
from when I was a little kid. When I grew up,
we didn't have air conditioning in the house,
so in the summer, my brother and I
would sleep in our basement on the floor,
and we'd watch "An Evening at the Improv" back then.
So I remember the very first time I saw Norm McDonald.
He was my comedy hero.
Sometimes my brother and I would sneak up and watch "SNL."
So I've always liked it
and I've always thought I wanted to try it,
but I never had the guts to do it.
But then when I got to the point where I lost all my sight,
we were in a different city from where I grew up
and I just kinda thought,
"Well, what the hell?"
I'm in my 40s now; I might as well just give it a shot.
If I don't do it now, I'll always regret it."
So I took a class and it went really well,
so I stuck with it.
Wow, okay.
So there was a class that you were able to take
that talks about...
What kinds of things did you learn in that?
Like how to compose a joke that wouldn't be too long
or too short or whatever,
or maybe how do you behave on stage?
Like what did they cover?
The biggest thing is editing.
So I took a course at Second City in Toronto
and got to do a performance at the John Candy Theater,
which was pretty amazing.
But yeah, that's basically, it's just classes
with just people who haven't done this before
and a professional comedian.
And the biggest thing is,
they can't teach you how to be funny, obviously,
but editing, everyone tries to write
these really long storytelling jokes when they start.
Everyone does it, every single person I've met,
and you can't do it for years.
It takes a long time to get to that point.
So that's basically the biggest thing they do,
is teach you how to take an idea
and get the funny part out of it
and make it short and kind of punchy.
(audience laughs)
So I do call myself Blind or Todd sometimes.
(audience laughs)
Depends on the circumstances.
If I'm in a meeting,
like going into a conference call at work,
I don't say "I'm Blind," I say, "It's Todd."
(audience laughs)
Obviously, I am super charismatic,
so everybody knows the word, right?
To be honest, I'm not sure if I can call myself blind.
Like they change these terminologies all the time.
So calling myself blind,
I might be oppressing myself, right?
(audience laughs)
I can start a hashtag or some sort of walk.
What? We're in Canada, we're lucky to have great healthcare.
The eye doctors are great here.
You know, he says, "I've seen this a lot.
We know exactly what to do. Here's this metal pole.
(audience laughs)
Tap it in front of yourself
and we'll see you in like a year."
(audience laughs)
I guess you have a lot of material to pull from,
you know, from your daily life.
I feel like we can all, you know, anybody with vision loss
has at least one story where something happened
that was just completely ridiculous,
and, you know, kind of goes into your archives
of things that you're like,
"You wouldn't believe what this person said or did"
or whatever.
Do you have one that really stands out for you?
Just a story that is super funny or that you had to laugh at
'cause it was so ridiculous?
Yeah, for sure.
And you're right, I kind of feel like having vision loss,
I feel it's almost a superpower when it comes to this,
because we do all have those stories.
The one I always think of that I think is funny is,
I used to work at a hospital,
I did the data and reporting and stuff
in the surgical department.
So I worked with all these heads-of-service,
all these surgeons.
And one time after a meeting,
I was walking out of the hospital
with the chief of neurosurgery, like a brain surgeon.
And I had my cane and we were walking out the door
and it was raining out,
and he said, "Oh, it's really raining, Todd.
I hope you're not parked too far."
(laughs) And what did you say?
(laughs) "I'm not driving."
He's a brain surgeon, I don't know. Weird stuff like that.
It's just people aren't used
to being around blind people, right?
So, I don't know, that's probably what it is, (laughs)
but it's funny.
Yeah, and people just don't know what to say.
And, you now, sometimes they will be really afraid
to say anything and afraid to say the wrong thing,
or sometimes they just think, you know,
"Well, I will just open my mouth
and let's see what comes out."
So yeah, we get lots of funny stuff.
But it's not always about the laughs, I guess.
I mean, as cool as it is to be able to laugh at ourselves
and take things a little less seriously,
there are some things about vision loss
that are hard to talk about and, you know, they are serious.
I feel when we make jokes,
they are a way to talk about the important things
in kind of a safe way.
But sometimes, you do have to go a little deeper
and talk about the serious stuff.
Do you think there are things about vision loss
that really don't get a lot of attention and should?
Oh, for sure, and you're right,
I think that one of the reasons I started this
was because there is, when there's something that's painful
and you can have fun with that sometimes.
But I think the thing we don't talk about enough,
and it might not be everybody,
but with my vision loss being so gradual,
we never really talked about anxiety
and mental health challenges around that.
It's not part of primary care and it probably should be.
Like I know with myself,
I started having panic attacks when I had kids.
My son, the first one I had, we were at a playground
and my wife had my younger son at a different part,
he was just a baby, and my three-year-old son at the time
fell and knocked the wind out of himself.
So he was hurt and he was scared
and he was like 10 feet in front of me
and I didn't know he was there.
So, I mean, stuff like that,
you wouldn't even think of a situation like that.
But it caused a panic attack
and I've had panic attacks ever since then.
So I think the mental health aspect of it
maybe isn't talked about enough
and it's kind of easy to think,
"Well, I'm doing fine with this," when you're probably not.
And are there things that have helped you?
Knowing that you have panic attacks now,
are there things that have helped you,
in addition to just being able to laugh at things?
Are there things that you do like for either relaxation
or things that, you know,
connecting with other people that have helped?
Anything like that?
Yeah, I would say, I'm lucky that my wife
is incredibly supportive.
My kids are just normal, so they're really good.
I've done counseling about it,
which is another kind of issue
I think that isn't recognized,
is even getting counseling or mental health support.
I've been to a few counselors
who've not known how to help me
because they don't know how to deal with someone
who has a disability that's progressing.
But you think that would be kind of an important thing
for counselors to know, but...
Yeah, and how much of a challenge is that
when you are reaching out for help
and yet you're sort of having to educate
that mental health professional
about how to deal with someone with a disability,
even though you are overwhelmed yourself?
Yeah, it makes it really difficult.
So I don't know if there's something
that should be maybe dealt with, but...
So when is your next standup? How long are you...
Are you doing tours? How are you approaching that?
I've been really lucky, actually.
I've been getting a good reception,
so there's a bunch of people who put on shows in Toronto
that have been inviting me on.
I'm doing, actually, a whole bunch, probably seven or eight
in the next few weeks.
I'm doing a "Star Wars" theme one next week,
that'll be interesting, on May the 4th.
So we'll see how that goes. (laughs)
Yeah. Well, may the 4th be with you!
(both chuckle) That's right.
That's fantastic.
If people want to either know more
about what's going on in your world
or eventually catch maybe some comedy clips,
is there a place that they can go to check that out?
Yeah, sure, just my name, Todd Blenkhorn,
B-L-E-N-K-H-O-R-N, on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram.
Fantastic, well, this has been super fun
and certainly illuminating
and I admire you for what you're doing
in terms of actually getting out there and say,
"Hey, you know, I've always wanted to do standup,
so what's the harm in it?"
And I think that's amazing.
Anything else you want to leave us with before we wrap up?
No, I just appreciate you having me on here.
It's been a lot of fun.
(audience laughs)
So I actually ended up getting a guide dog.
And people are crazy with dogs,
but they are out of their minds when it comes to guide dogs.
I don't get it. (audience laughs)
I was honestly, this isn't a joke,
I was sitting in a coffee shop with my guide dog
and a person came over and said,
"Can I give your dog a cheese danish?"
(audience laughing)
And I didn't even know how to answer that.
He's already had a cheese danish.
He's doing Keto, he can't have carbs.
That's the stupidest question in the world.
Like everyone knows the rules around guide dogs,
you just don't acknowledge them, act like they don't exist.
Every day someone will pet my dog
and they always say the same thing,
"I know I'm not supposed to, I can't help it."
So what I like to do is when they bend down to pet my dog,
I punch them as hard as I can,
which I know I'm not supposed to do,
but I just can't help it. (audience laughing)
It's been great. Thank you so much, Todd.
(gentle music)
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