Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Our main course: beef, crab, polenta cakes, green beans, cauliflower, and shrimp

For the 25 minutes it was pitch black at the Foundation Fighting Blindness‘ Dining in the Dark event (which I attended as a media guest), all I could think about was how easy it would be for someone to steal my purse, stab me, or eat all my food. I guess this is what watching too much CSI does to you. It makes you extra paranoid and jittery.

Thank God the lights weren’t off the entire time. The first course was see-able, and I devoured my soup course in plain sight while goggling at important people like Ross Perot and Ebby Halliday, who gathered inside the Hilton Anatole last night to hear remarks made by the Foundation’s people. The work that FFB is doing is pretty amazing, and if I had millions to give, I’d be supporting its mission to drive the research that’ll provide preventions, treatments, and cures for those afflicted with retinal degenerative diseases too. All the speeches made me thankful for my gift of sight, and even more so when they turned all the lights off for the main course. Blind waiters, like our guy Joseph, trained all night to serve donors their dishes. A firefighter stood in the corner should disaster befall. And a few staff members wore night goggles in case someone choked or needed assistance. Everything was fine, really. Nothing to be scared about, but if Events Editor Liz Johnstone and People Newspaper’s Bradford Pearson hadn’t been there by my side, I might not have made it through those 25 minutes.

Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

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